Like the Clintons, it seems as if corruption may run in the family of former Vice President Joe Biden.
Not long after reports surfaced that claimed Biden abused his power as vice president to get his son a sweetheart deal with China, the spotlight hass turned on his brother’s alleged misdeeds — and when the answers are discovered in court, it could cost Biden his 2020 hopes.
According to Breitbart, James Biden, the VP’s younger brother, has been accused of fraud and corruption in business misdealings with a Tennessee rural healthcare company. Now, his former business partners are dragging him into court after he mistakenly sent them a text message meant for someone else.
Michael Frey and his business partner, Dr. Mohannad Azzam, filed a lawsuit in federal court last month alleging that James Biden, hedge fund manager Michael Lewitt, and others lied when they promised to bring in wealthy investors to help grow their rural healthcare enterprise.
It gets much worse from here.
After failing to deliver any of the promised investors, the lawsuit then claims that James Biden told the two men to borrow $10 million from a hedge fund manager involved in the deal.
James Biden then stole their idea and pawned it off as his own to a conglomerate of Turkish investors, the lawsuit says.
“The lawsuit takes direct aim at Biden, painting him as a con artist who uses his ties to his brother — now a Democratic candidate for president — to lure his victims,” The Knoxville News Sentinel reported.
Here’s how it all started.
In 2017, Frey and Azzam pitched a multi-million dollar business model to Americore Health, an operator of rural hospitals, where James Biden was listed as a “principal” at the company.
Then, James Biden introduced the two Tennessee man to Lewitt, the hedge fund manager who said Americore would buy Diverse Medical – the company created by Frey and Azzam – for $7 million.
After a deal was struck, Americore quickly fell behind on its scheduled payments.
The lawsuit then asserts that James Biden and Lewitt created a dizzying plan to sell their Americore – which now included Diverse Medical – to a third company called the Platinum Group
Information on the Platinum Group is scarce, but it appears James Biden and/or Lewitt likely set it up in order to purchase Americore… from themselves.
Despite Frey and Azzam raising serious concerns, they were told that they would still receive a payout check.
James Biden reportedly invoked his families’ political power to ease concerns from Frey and Azzam, the lawsuit contends.
Here’s where the alleged corruption and shady deals come into play.
Frey and Azzam were then told to seek a $10 million cash loan — part of which would come from Lewitt’s hedge fund — to expand their business.
Frey and Azzam assert in their lawsuit they were told the loan would be repaid with money brought in from new investors.
The entire scheme blew up when James Biden accidentally sent Frey a text message about their company meant for someone else in November 2018.
“We can wrap a/c into Frey’s entity further diluting them both in the process? After we take control of both. Just a thought,” read the text Biden accidentally sent Frey. “We must have complete control, too many moving pieces. Jim.”
Whoops.
But there’s more.
Frey and Azzam learned from a third party that James Biden and Lewitt – without telling anyone – tried selling the entire company to foreign investors in Turkey without mentioning the two Tennessee men.
Biden and Lewitt were pitching the company as if they were the only men involved, which appears to have been a scheme that resulted in them cutting Frey and Azzam out of the deal and keeping all of the money for themselves.
When Frey and Azzam tried regaining control of their business, the lawsuit alleges that Lewitt demanded repayment of the $10 million loan his hedge fund gave them.
How’s that for dirty and crooked?
It’s just the latest in a long line of corruption and fraud allegations surrounding the Biden family — and the former VP is quickly slipping in the polls.
Last month, The New York Times published an explosive report detailing Joe Biden’s shady connection to a Ukrainian corruption scandal.
The accusations largely involve Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, profiting financially from his father’s time in the White HOuse.
The Ukrainian government recently reopened an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a company that previously paid Hunter Biden roughly $50,000 a month for “consulting fees.”
While serving as the vice president in the Obama administration, Joe Biden allegedly tried to intimidate the Ukrainian government to remove the prosecutor from the case.
After Joe Biden visited Ukraine in March 2016 as part of the Obama administration, he “threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor [Yuriy Lutsenko], who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.”
Biden’s plan worked, and the Ukrainian Parliament removed Lutsenko as the prosecutor on the case.
The allegations and scandal went away for a few years, but it has resurfaced given Biden is now running for president and is considered the Democratic frontrunner.
Like the Clintons, the Biden family also has a long history of shady pay-for-play schemes and abusing their power for their own self-interests.
Martin Walsh is an editor for I Love My Freedom and a contributor for The American Mirror and The Horn News. His work has been featured in various conservative media outlets, such as LifeZette, Independent Journal, and Media Equalizer.