Joe Biden’s family’s domestic and international and business dealings are linked to the former vice president’s political influence, explained Peter Schweizer, author of Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, president of the Government accountability Institute, and senior contributor at Breitbart News.
Schweizer joined Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily withhost Alex Marlow to discuss his latest book on the date of its launch.
“Everything we do can be replicated,” said Schweizer of the research and findings in his book. “We follow the money. We follow the paper trail. So there’s no anonymous sources, and what we simply show you is who’s getting money, when, how, and in what context are they getting that money.”
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Schweizer said, “In the case of Joe Biden, for example, we show you how five of his family members cashed in while he was vice president, who was paying them, what they were being paid for, the lack of any skill or background they had in that field, the fact that they were scoring these sweetheart deals, they didn’t get them before he was vice president, they didn’t get them after he was vice president, and the policy positions that Joe Biden took at the time that his family members were getting paid.”
Schweizer continued, “We really use financial records, court documents, [and] in one case, criminal case documents, in this book, from seven different countries. It takes a lot of work. We have a research team of 12. They do a terrific job, and it’s something that very few people are doing these days because of the cost, because of the time and the level of detail that’s involved, but we think it’s absolutely necessary to follow the money and cover these stories that nobody else either has the inclination or the resources to cover.”
Left-wing and partisan Democrat political biases shape many news media outlets’ disinterest in investigating and reporting on Democrats’ business dealings, said Marlow.
“A lot of very well paid, arrogant, elite journalists in a celebrity class, now. [don’t] do a lot that’s productive,” Marlow stated. “They spend tons of time researching things and getting awards for things that end up either being false or sort of irrelevant. … The media is not interested in researching these people.”
Marlow added, “It takes money to get this stuff done. You need to buy these books. You should buy it in hardcover. You should buy it today, and you should buy multiples and give them out.”
The volume of Biden family members — dubbed the “Biden 5” by Schweizer — involved in business dealings linked to Joe Biden’s former role as vice president is surprising, assessed Schweizer.
“Having done this for a long time, having researched and investigated Republicans and Democrats, I have not found a case where you actually have five members of a family who cashed in at the same time,” Schweizer said. “That’s kind of unprecedented.”
Schweizer remarked, “We certainly have new material on Hunter [Biden] in the book, including the fact that he had a joint-venture business setup that got $3 million in our taxpayer money in the form of a grant.”
Schweizer went on, “In addition to Hunter, we have Joe Biden’s brother James who landed a very lucrative job in the construction business. Essentially what happened is, a guy named Kevin Justice — a longtime Biden family friend — in November of 2010, went and visited the white House and met with Joe Biden’s people in Joe Biden’s office. He started a company called HillStone International, a construction company. Three weeks after that meeting in the White House, he announced that James Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, was going to join as an executive vice president. ”
Schweizer continued, “What stands out in this, of course, is that James Biden has no background in construction, and in a bio the company released on him, all they noted was the fact that he was comfortable in the corridors of power and his brother was Vice president of the United States. A few months after he joins the firm, lo and behold, this new company lands a contract to build 100,000 homes in Iraq from the federal government. They get a bunch of other contracts, as well.”
“Frank, [Joe Biden’s] other brother, starts doing deals in Costa Rica,” explained Schweizer. “Joe Biden, as vice president, visits Costa Rica in the spring of 2009 and suddenly Frank — who was has no background in energy [and] no background in major real estate development projects — starts getting all these deals, meetings, photos, letters, [and] support from the Costa Rican government for these projects.”
Schweizer contrasted politicians who build successful businesses prior to entering politics with those who amass fortunes after being elected to political offices.
“You have people who go into politics, like Trump, for example, or Michael Bloomberg on the Democratic side who have built successful businesses before they went into politics,” Schweizer noted. “what you have in the Bidens is kind of the opposite. They actually start businesses once Joe becomes vice president, businesses that they have no background in. They really have no business in even trying to do deals except for the fact that he’s vice president, and you have that with James, you have that with Frank, [and] you’ve got Joe Biden’s sister Valerie, who was involved in his campaigns, ran his presidential campaigns, and put $2.5 million from those campaigns into her own company.”
Schweizer added, “Then you’ve got another situation involving Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley, who’s married to a guy named Howard Krein, and Howard Krein is involved in this company called StartUp Health, that really had no business plan. They had no website. They were just weeks off the ground, and lo and behold, they’re ushered off into the Oval Office because of Joe Biden. They meet with Barack Obama. They highlight this on their website. They get invited to sort of showcase at these major federal government conferences on healthcare policy. Joe Biden actually goes and briefs the investors and the participants with this company in closed-door briefings while he’s vice president, and the chief medical officer of this company just happens to be married to his daughter, Ashley Biden.”
Schweizer observed the lack of news media coverage of Biden’s family’s business and financial dealings. “It’s just this morass, this huge cloud of money and deals swirling around Joe Biden, and the fact the he was vice president for eight years — and none of this was ever reported — to me, is just shocking, because it’s blatant. The timing is clear, and just the number of instances — five family members — is something I’ve never seen before.”
“We discovered this other company that [Hunter Biden] set up with his business partner Devon Archer called the Burnham Financial Group,” Schweizer remarked. “The Burnham Financial group became embroiled in this scandal whereby Hunter Biden’s business partner was accused and charged with trying to defraud an Indian tribe — the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe, which is the poorest Indian tribe in the United States — and as a result of that court case, all these financial records came out involving Burnham Financial Group [and] involving Hunter Biden, and [what] you find in those documents [are] claims and statements that they have financial deals with Kazakh officials.”
Schweizer added, “We know the Kazakhs transferred money into a bank account that Hunter Biden had access to and drew money from. We also know that, in these corporate records, they say they have a $200 million deal with a Russian oligarch named Yelena Baturina. Yelena Baturina is interesting, because if you spend five minutes on Google, you’ll find that she is widely believed to be tied to Russian organized crime.”
“You have several mysterious Chinese companies that they are dealing with,” Schweizer continued, observing a conflict of interest between Joe Biden in his former capacity as vice president with his son’s business dealings in China. “One of those seems to be tied to Chinese government officials. This is just further evidence that he’s doing major deals with the Chinese while his father was point person on China policy. It’s just a huge massive cloud of money coming from these foreign entities, and really, honestly, again, Hunter Biden has no real legitimate claim that these deals should have happened based on his merits.”
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
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