Did Biden Use His Office to Enrich Other Family Members?

It would appear that “ol Uncle Joe” the “man of the people,” may have been just another slick and clever politician using his power and prestige as VP to enrich other family members — besides his son Hunter.

Author Peter Schweizer chronicles in his new tell-all book “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” how both family members along with political cronies of the former VP personally tapped into Joe’s vast political connections to enrich themselves, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, and in some instances even using taxpayer dollars, all with Joe’s blessing.

Biden emerges as the king of the sweetheart deals, with at least 5-family members directly getting rich off of the former VP’s powerful position, by encouraging them to profit in whatever commercial venture, using his name as leverage.

Moreover, these deals include foreign partners and in some cases, even indiscriminately using U.S. taxpayer dollars, to benefit family members.

Schweizer’s painstaking research uncovers at least 5-family members who directly profited from Biden’s position as VP during the Obama years which includes: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and Frank, and Sister Valerie.

So who are these obscure family members’ reaping financial rewards?

First on deck is Biden’s younger brother, James, who served as Joe Biden’s financial chair during Biden’s 1972 Senate campaign, and the two have remained quite close even since.

In fact, then-Senator Biden would bring his younger brother on congressional delegation trips all over the globe, and when Biden became VP that’s when James really began to cash in, appearing with the VP at state functions in the White House, and visiting Pope Francis in 2015. James’ numerous visits to the White House dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, along with his flourishing commercial and growing business opportunities, that coincidently mirrored his brother’s tenure as vice president.

As an example of how Biden was able to use his influence, perhaps avoiding a serious ethics violation, take his association with Kevin Justice, a longtime Biden family friend, who grew up in Delaware.

According to White House visitors’ logs, on November 4th, 2010, Justice visited the White House and met with Biden adviser Michele Smith in the Office of the Vice President.

For the record, Justice is the president of HillStone International. After meeting with the Vice President on the 4^th less then a month later Hillstone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president.

Ironically James had the same expertise in the field of construction, that Hunter had in the field of energy…” none.”

Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Six months later, HillStone International announced a joint venture with a South Korean company to build 100,000 homes, as part of a $35 billion dollar project.

The multi deal also included a $22 million U.S. federal government contract awarded to HillStone to manage a construction project for the State Department, without an apparent bid.

Up next is the chief medical officer Howard Krein, who works for an investment consultancy firm called StartUp Health, based in New York City. Krein is married to Joe Biden’s youngest daughter Ashely.

The company was barely up and running, without even a functioning website, when “ol Joe” stepped in 2011, invited the company’s executives into the Oval Office, to meet with Obama and low and behold Krein’s company becomes a major player.

The following day the new company would be featured at a large health care tech conference being run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and StartUp Health executives became regular visitors to the White House, attending events in 2011, 2014 and 2015.

Krein candidly admitted he reached out to his father-in-law, for a little extra assistance, “I happened to be talking to my father-in-law that day and I mentioned Steve and Unity were down there in Washington, D.C.,”

Frank Biden, another brother of the former VP, dreamed of building thousands of homes and world-class golf courses and casinos in Costa Rica

As luck would have it, VP Biden was asked by Obama to be the point man in Latin America and the Caribbean, similar to Biden being the point man for Ukraine.

Despite Frank Biden’s lack of experience in building such developments, in October of 2016, the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Education signed a letter of intent with Frank’s company, Sun Fund Americas, to begin building homes in the jungles of Costa Rica.

The previous year, the Obama-Biden administrations OPIC had authorized a $6.5 million taxpayer-backed loan for the project.

Valerie Biden Owens is the sister of the former VP; she helped run his two Senate campaigns, as well as his presidential runs in 1988 and 2008.

She’s was also a senior partner in a political messaging firm named Joe Slade White & Company, the three-man company raked in millions of dollars in consulting fees from the Biden campaigns that Valerie was running.

Then, of course, we have former drug addict and dishonorably discharged Hunter Biden, who needs no introductions.