While investigating a Mississippi attorney in the late 1990s, the FBI captured secret recordings of President Biden’s brother James Biden, the Washington Post reported.
According to the Post, in 1998, Mississippi trial attorney Richard Scruggs paid James Biden’s consulting firm Lion Hall $100,000 for advice on getting a bill passed to force tobacco companies to pay billions. The bill was opposed by then-Senator Joe Biden.
Scruggs admitted that but for the fact that James Biden was the then-Delware senator’s brother, he probably wouldn’t have hired him. Joe Biden eventually came around to supporting the legislation which ultimately failed to pass the Senate.
While neither James Biden nor the then-senator was ever charged in connection to the FBI’s corruption investigation into Scruggs, the recordings reviewed by the Post are another example of how the Biden family profited from Joe Biden’s position.
James Biden and his wife Sara came to the FBI’s attention when Biden attempted to create a consulting firm with associates of Scruggs while the Mississippi attorney and his colleagues were being investigated by the FBI for a plan to bribe a local judge.
Eventually, everyone involved in the bribery scheme pleaded guilty just weeks before Joe Biden was picked as Barack Obama’s 2008 running mate.
According to the Post, the secretly recorded conversations between James Biden and Scruggs are proof that long before Hunter Biden began benefitting from his family name, the president’s brother undertook a series of business ventures “that created headaches” for Joe Biden.
When the House Oversight Committee recently subpoenaed James and Sara Biden, their consulting company Lion Hall, which Scruggs had hired in 1998, was cited as central to the committee’s probe.
The Bidens had a decades-long relationship with Richard Scruggs, according to the Post. James Biden joined Scruggs on a boat trip to discuss a possible partnership on asbestos lawsuits. Additionally, Joe Biden flew on Scruggs’ private plane to a fundraiser.
