Today is an important day for the Biden family. James Biden, Joe’s brother, who is tightly interwoven with the “family business,” is going to be testifying behind closed doors to the House impeachment inquiry.

It’s fair to say that James Biden has left enough of a paper trail to make his testimony to the committee quite interesting. The real question is not if he can save himself from potential fraud charges or possible Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) violations (something that may yet trip up his nephew Hunter), but if he can protect his brother Joe from being implicated in any of the sketchy business dealings that Joe has spent years claiming he knew nothing about.

Every time an associate of Hunter or James Biden testifies, we get a version of what we have heard before. These foreign entities were buying the Biden name. Joe’s name would be invoked repeatedly. Joe himself would show up to dinners, make casual conversation, and leave. Hunter would place phone calls to dear old Dad to prove that yes, he took calls from his ne’er-do-well crack-addled son. And the Biden family made money off the business.

So now we get to James Biden, who is saddled with a whole host of legal problems of his own. The POLITICO story detailing his Americore shenanigans, where he got himself involved – apparently hoping to help give Joe a health care platform to run on in 2020, and selling himself as Joe’s brother to the company – by looking for multiple funding sources (some of them foreign) that never came through, while taking a paycheck from the increasingly faltering company, was released just this last Sunday. James Biden was ordered to repay Americore some of the money they’d paid him. Americore is still being looked at for Medicare fraud. While Joe was not a part of the Americore scheme, it’s clear that if it had succeeded, brother James was going to offer it up to brother Joe on a silver platter as a campaign plank.

But that gets us back to the heart of the matter. James Biden and Hunter Biden were actively looking for ways to enrich themselves – and by extension, the entire family – by advertising their “services” to different companies, especially foreign ones, with access to Joe Biden as their golden ticket. Devon Archer, Rob Walker, and Tony Bobulinski have all testified under oath to Congress that this was the Biden family business – sell access, or the “illusion” of access, to Joe Biden. Joe was “not involved” in the actual financial transactions, in order to give himself “plausible deniability,” as Tony Bobulinski said James Biden once said. But Joe DID show up whenever and wherever Hunter asked him to, in order to prove the point. Joe made phone calls, Joe put in cameo appearances at lunches, Joe showed up to Cafe Milano for dinner. By any measure, Joe was “involved” – he just never directly touched the money. THAT was the role that James Biden and Hunter Biden got to play. But the idea that Joe had NO idea that he was being used to prove that the Biden family had access to power? At the time, Joe knew. Now, of course, he is an “elderly man with a poor memory” who can’t be prosecuted for “willfully retaining” classified documents because he can no longer participate in his own defense.

But now, James Biden is under oath and facing Congress. Can he save himself without implicating Joe? Or will he give himself up in order to save Joe?

House Republicans have gathered a considerable amount of admissible evidence that the Biden family used the influence of the family patriarch and the family name to secure business deals and payments over the course of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and immediately after he left office.

Congressional investigators are likely to seek answers about two key deals in which James Biden was closely involved, including evidence of payments to his brother and attempted influence peddling, according to information uncovered by the Oversight Committee, IRS investigators, and the FBI.

The first involves James Biden’s association with the failing healthcare company, the now-bankrupt Americore, for which he reportedly worked to secure investments to keep the rural hospital operator afloat. The second is the Biden family deal with CEFC China Energy which sent Hunter and James Biden millions in exchange for help securing investments in U.S. and foreign energy infrastructure projects.

Paul Fishman, lawyer for James Biden, did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News ahead of the testimony. He previously told The Washington Post that “at no time did Jim involve his brother in any of his business relationships.” President Biden and the White House have maintained similar denials.

The Oversight Committee first identified Americore as the source of a series of loans to James Biden, some of which, the committee argues, were used to send a payment to his brother Joe Biden. In total, the committee found $600,000 in loans to the younger Biden from the healthcare company.

One of the loans – for $200,000 – was sent to James Biden’s personal bank account by the company. On the very same day, he sent a payment for the exact same amount to his brother, Joe Biden, labeled as a “loan repayment.” The committee argues that the transfer from Americore funded the payment to Joe Biden even as the company was in dire financial straits.

According to bankruptcy court documents regarding Americore, James Biden had made representations to the company that “his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

Carol Fox, the trustee who represented Americore during its bankruptcy proceedings, told the impeachment investigators in a transcribed interview she could neither determine what role James Biden played nor identify any paperwork backing up the loans made to him from the struggling company in 2018. As a fiduciary representing the Americore estate, Fox sued Biden because he failed to repay the $600,000 total in loans he received even as the company was struggling to stay afloat.

As POLITICO reported, James Biden eventually settled the lawsuit and agreed to pay back $350,000. Between that and the money he “repaid” to Joe, it sure seems like James Biden is a pretty lousy businessman. He kind of sucks at the whole “deal-making” thing, and it’s clear that without Joe, James Biden would be a low-level used car salesman. But because his last name is “Biden” and his brother was a senator, then vice-president, then president, James Biden found a way to wheel and deal and spend and sell the Biden name.

James Biden might feel enough fraternal loyalty to Joe to throw himself under the proverbial bus to protect his brother’s “legacy.” Would anyone be surprised if James claimed that Joe only showed up as a favor to him, and to Hunter, but had zero idea as to what was happening? We already know Hunter’s strategy – his daddy just wuves his widdle boy so much that even in the grip of a drug addiction, he just couldn’t tell that coke-snortin’ face no, and of course Hunter isn’t responsible for ANYTHING he did while putting lines up his nose, not even child support – but James Biden must know that Joe’s priority is Hunter, not him. Will James take the heat, or the fall, and gamble on a presidential pardon later? After all, Joe has only said he wouldn’t pardon Hunter. That loophole is still open for a brother. We’ll just have to wait and see what the transcript says – and then what Hunter decides to say when he shows up at the end of the month to testify.

UPDATE 2:50 PM ET
We now have James Biden’s opening statement.

NEW: In James Biden's opening statement, he claims:

"Joe Biden has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest in those activities."

"I never asked my brother to take any official action on behalf of me, my business associates, or anyone else." pic.twitter.com/C5kxhWNW8s

— Matt Viser (@mviser) February 21, 2024

The used car salesman who only had a job because his name is Biden would like to claim that he has MAD BUSINESS SKILLZ.

Ahem https://t.co/TweeEMkovk pic.twitter.com/WOWcwBzfFz

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 21, 2024

Americore would beg to differ.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click