Joe Biden’s youngest brother Frank also referred to the president as “the big guy” — and interrupted meetings with business associates to take his calls.
Frank Biden, 69, repeatedly halted meetings with an executive at an Illinois-based industrial manufacturing firm to take calls from “the big guy” while his brother was vice president, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Matthew Brady, who worked at the firm, Federal Signal Corp., from 2006 to 2017 as a vice president and later a president of safety and security, said Frank told him during several meetings: “I’ve got to put you on hold, the big guy is calling me.”
“I thought, ‘OK, great, your brother is the vice president,’” Brady told The Journal of the encounters.
Frank Biden also invoked his brother on the day of his inauguration in an ad run by his Florida-based law firm, Berman Law Group LLP, earning a rebuke from then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“It’s the White House’s policy that the president’s name should not be used in connection with any commercial activities to suggest in any way that could be reasonably understood to imply his endorsement or support,” Psaki said at the time.
Joe Biden, 80, had reportedly warned his youngest brother about invoking the family name for business deals during the 2020 presidential campaign, pulling him aside at one point and saying: “For Christ’s sake, watch yourself.”
The president has repeatedly told reporters that he has had no discussions with his son Hunter about his business affairs, despite growing evidence to the contrary.
Brady and Frank Biden did not immediately respond to requests for comment. White House Counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams also did not respond to a request for comment.
The Journal report also showed James Biden invoked his brother’s union ties after he and nephew Hunter acquired the hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors in 2006.
“[T]he story was that they had relationships with different unions and that they would anticipate being able to get union funding or union investments into the fund,” Charles Provini, a Wall Street veteran who served as the fund’s president, told the paper.
“I was a little star-struck at the time perhaps,” Provini added. “I think most of the things that he was saying were just pleasantries … It might have been for credibility.”
Another James Biden venture involved rural hospital network Americore Health, which brushed off investors expecting returns from the partnership.
“Don’t worry every time someone threatens to sue you,” Michael Lewitt, an associate of James, reportedly texted Michael Frey, both of whom were involved in an effort to expand mental health care and treatments for addiction.
“You’re with us now nobody is gonna touch you,” Lewitt added.
Frey also said he believed his firm’s involvement was “‘protected’ because of Jim Biden’s connections,” according to the messages that became public in a 2019 lawsuit filed by investors.
Americore Health filed for bankruptcy the same year, and the investor lawsuit was settled the following year — but court filings show a dispute over potential fraud committed by James Biden.
Those allegations hinged on alleged conversations involving one of those investors, who said James Biden had invoked his brother’s political status during negotiations and pledged that “the Biden’s family name” would support business growth.
James Biden disputed the characterization and said his remarks had been misrepresented during negotiations.
“Jim Biden has been an entrepreneur and executive for more than five decades and is clear that he always conducted himself ethically and honorably in all his business dealings,” a spokesperson for the first brother told The Journal.
Along with Frank Biden, two other business associates of first son Hunter Biden — James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinski — have separately identified Joe Biden as “the big guy.”
Devon Archer, Hunter’s partner at their investment firm Rosemont Seneca, testified to Congress this year that the first son referred to his dad as “my guy” — and put his father on speakerphone at least 20 times with associates to promote the Biden “brand.”
In a later interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Archer said it was “categorically false” for the president to say he had no role in Hunter’s business dealings.
A June 2020 FBI informant file released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) earlier this year also shows Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky using the moniker for the president.
Asked by The Post in June why the file referred to him as “the big guy,” Biden snapped: “Why do you ask such a dumb question?”
The unclassified FD-1023 form revealed a confidential human source paid by the bureau spoke with Zlochevsky about the president and his son accepting $10 million in a bribe from the Burisma owner.
Burisma appointed Hunter Biden to its board in 2014, when his father oversaw US policy on Ukraine as vice president in the Obama White House, and he served in the position until 2019, earning up to $1 million annually.
House Republicans on Thursday began their impeachment inquiry against the president over allegations that he may have profited from lucrative business arrangements James and Hunter Biden had with foreign nationals.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoenaed bank records showing the Biden family received more than $24 million from entities in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania and China between 2014 and 2019.
Hunter and James Biden netted $4.8 million alone from a deal with the Chinese energy firm CEFC in 2017. The amount was independently confirmed by a Senate Republican report and the Washington Post and began to flow to their accounts just 10 days after Hunter threatened one of their associates by invoking his father.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote to a translator for the firm, Raymond Zhao on July 30 of that year.
He added that he would “make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
The Post’s bombshell October 2020 report also found emails on the first son’s abandoned laptop that show Hunter would hold a 10% stake in CEFC “for the big guy.”
The 2017 exchange on WhatsApp was uncovered by IRS tax investigators during their five-year probe of the first son’s finances.
The House Ways and Means Committee has released hundreds of documents from two whistleblowers tasked with the case, who alleged that the Justice Department interfered in their investigation.
Comer also revealed Tuesday that the president’s Wilmington, Del., residence was also the beneficiary address for two wire transfers totaling $260,000 that a Chinese government-backed investment firm, BHR Partners, sent to Hunter Biden in July and August 2019.
The first son disclosed in federal court filings earlier this year that he was living in California in summer 2019 while preparing to write his memoir, though he spent time at his father’s Delaware mansion in 2017 and 2018 following his divorce from wife Kathleen Buhle.
Hunter attorney Abbe Lowell claimed to The Wall Street Journal that the money came from loans Hunter secured from his shares and the president’s Delaware address was “his only permanent address at the time.”
He also said that Hunter wasn’t in business with his father and that any discussions between the president and his son in the presence of business associates would have been “small talk.”
White House Counsel spokesman Ian Sams has dismissed the impeachment inquiry of the president, saying Republicans had “no evidence of wrongdoing” and were using “discredited personal attacks on him and his family.”
Not all of James’ ventures succeeded. One sought to build 100,000 homes in Iraq with a $1.5 billion potential contract while Joe Biden as vice president oversaw US policy toward the nation in 2010.
The first brother was called in by the construction firm Hill International to serve as executive vice president of a joint venture, HillStone International, that would build low-cost houses in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The venture touted James Biden’s work for his brother’s successful 1972 campaign for the US Senate in Delaware, and the former president of Hill International said “Jim was very good at getting meetings set up and getting people to return his phone calls.”
But construction never got started and the firm ended operations by taking a $1 million charge.
“If the question is, ‘What did Jim Biden accomplish for us?’ ex-Hill International president David Richter told The Journal, “The answer is nothing.”
