(Politico) New details about Jim Biden’s foreign fundraising efforts are spilling out in a Kentucky bankruptcy court, where recent testimony indicates that President Joe Biden’s brother partnered with Qatari government officials in his quest to find money for U.S. health care ventures.
The sworn testimony by fund manager Michael Lewitt, a former business partner of Jim Biden’s, attests that two companies that facilitated the efforts were part-owned by “members of the Qatari government.”
One company named in the testimony partnered directly with Jim Biden in the multi-year fundraising efforts.
The second company provided financial backing for a series of loans that a hospital chain paid Jim Biden to arrange, according to documents and testimony Lewitt submitted in the course of the federal bankruptcy proceedings.
If substantiated, the alleged arrangements would constitute some of the closest known financial links between a relative of President Joe Biden and a foreign government.
The alleged arrangements stem from an effort by Jim Biden to raise money from Qatari sources for ventures in the U.S. beginning in the months after his older brother left the vice presidency. At the time, the tiny, gas-rich nation faced a financial blockade from its neighbors and was spending lavishly to shore up its political standing in the West.
Public records and emails obtained by POLITICO offer a window on fundraising efforts in which Jim Biden invoked his ties to older brother and sought workarounds to restrictions on international money movements. Transactions related to the efforts are also at the heart of a recently-settled fraud case brought by the SEC and are being scrutinized as part of a federal criminal investigation in South Florida.
Much about the efforts remains unknown, and the White House, the Qatari Embassy, and a representative for Jim Biden all did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Jim Biden suggested to congressional investigators in February that his fundraising efforts stalled for lack of viable projects to back. But the previously unreported testimony by fund manager Michael Lewitt about the ownership of the two companies — the Platinum Group USA and Obermeyer Engineering Consulting — indicates that Jim Biden forged closer ties to Qatar’s government than previously understood.
Lewitt, a former business partner of Jim Biden’s, is likely to face questions about the efforts when he sits for a planned interview with House impeachment inquiry investigators.
No date has been announced for the interview, and Lewitt declined repeated requests to comment further on his courtroom testimony.
Crisis in the Middle East
In June 2017, Qatar’s neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, ganged up and cut diplomatic ties with the country, citing its alleged support for terrorism. The ensuing financial and physical blockade threw the country — a peninsula that juts out from Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf — into a sustained crisis.
