What the President’s Brother Said

James Biden, the younger brother of President Joe Biden, defended himself and the president during a closed-door meeting in Congress on Wednesday.

In his opening statement to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, Biden said that he had “nothing to hide” and accused Republicans who have suggested that he improperly benefitted from his brother’s status of being “either mistaken, ill-informed or flat-out lying.”

Biden stressed that the president “never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interests” in his business affairs, before arguing that there was “no basis” for Republicans to pursue the impeachment inquiry into his brother, whom he credited for “personal integrity and character.”

“Because of my intimate knowledge of my brother’s personal integrity and character, as well as my own strong ethics, I have always kept my professional life separate from our close personal relationship,” Biden said. “I never asked my brother to take any official action on behalf of me, my business associates or anyone else.”

“It is difficult to open my personal and professional life to such intense public scrutiny, but I am doing so to comply with the committee’s inquiry,” he continued. “The negative and destructive assumptions about me and my relationship with my brother Joe are wrong. There is no basis for this inquiry to continue.”

Elsewhere in the opening statement, Biden said that checks he wrote to his brother for $200,000 and $40,000 in 2017 and 2018, which were labeled as “loan repayment,” were indeed personal loans that he had repaid.

Some Republicans have claimed, without any clear evidence, that the checks were instead a way for Biden to “launder” money he received from China through his brother, whose two terms as vice president ended in January 2017.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the White House via email on Wednesday night.

Biden was the first member of his family to appear for a deposition in the impeachment inquiry. The president’s son Hunter Biden, who is said to have a strong relationship with James, his uncle, is set to testify next week.

The content of James Biden’s remarks beyond the opening statement is unknown, as a transcript from the private hearing has yet to be released. However, some House lawmakers weighed in on the testimony in comments to reporters outside of the meeting.

“He has said a lot of things that have contradicted himself in that testimony,” Republican Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona said during a break, according to the Associated Press. “So, when you see the transcript, you’ll see.”

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland had a different view, telling reporters that lawmakers had “heard nothing indicating that Joe Biden had anything to do with the business ventures of Hunter Biden or James Biden and nothing has contradicted that basic understanding.”

The impeachment inquiry has recently taken a major blow with last week’s indictment of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who was hit with federal felony charges, accused of fabricating a claim that Joe and Hunter Biden took bribes from executives at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

A Department of Justice court filing on Wednesday also alleged that Smirnov has ties to “high-level” Russian intelligence agents and government officials, some of whom are said to be participating in an effort to interfere in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.