(Politico) For years, Joe Biden shared a bookkeeper with his son, Hunter. He also shared a personal lawyer with his brother, Jim. And when Jim Biden wanted to know more about one of Hunter Biden’s associates, he hired the former head of Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail to investigate.
Since 2019, Joe Biden has repeatedly distanced himself from his family’s business dealings, saying that he has never so much as discussed them with his relatives or with anyone else. But House impeachment inquiry interviews, public records and emails reviewed by POLITICO show that members of his inner circle were regularly enmeshed in those dealings: Many of the president’s closest staffers and advisers have doubled as his relatives’ business associates, both during and after their stints working for the man at the center of the Biden family orbit.
Those overlaps reflect an all-in-the family approach to business and politicking that dates back a half-century to the president’s first Senate bid, run primarily by his parents and siblings. Since then, his political patrons have at times forged business ties with his relatives, who in turn have converted some of their business partners into campaign supporters. And over a lifetime in public life, some of the president’s aides have taken on roles as surrogate members of the tight-knit Biden clan.
The Bidens’ approach complicates their efforts to distance the president from his family’s ventures.
As Jim and Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings have caused controversy and several of their business partners have been convicted of federal fraud and corruption crimes in recent years, any potential links between their business dealings and the president have come in for renewed scrutiny.
To allay concerns about any intermingling of their affairs, the Bidens have said that they observe strict interpersonal firewalls to avoid discussing business among themselves.
But with so many former and current aides in the mix — and with the surfacing of private communications in which Jim and Hunter Biden suggest they represent their powerful relative in business matters — onlookers are forced to take family members at their word that those firewalls always held.
In one instance, Jim Biden testified that he hired the former head of his brother’s Secret Service detail, Dale Pupillo, to investigate a Chinese executive that Hunter Biden was doing business with in 2017.
Jim Biden said during his February impeachment inquiry interview that he commissioned Pupillo in advance of accompanying Hunter Biden to Hong Kong so that his nephew could meet with the executive, Patrick Ho.
