Biden’s brother was hired to broker secret $140M Saudi deal when Joe was veep, docs reveal
Now-first brother James Biden was hired to help a Philadelphia construction company resolve a decades-old dispute with the Saudi government because he was the sibling of then-Vice President Joe Biden, court documents reveal.
The 2017 admission by James Biden, referenced in two affidavits from May 2021, is certain to draw the attention of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee as it investigates the first family’s influence-peddling dating back years.
The affidavit, first obtained by DailyMail.com, was filed in a dispute between the construction company, Hill International, and one of three law firms it hired to help claw back approximately $140 million the Saudis owed for a desalinization plant built by a Hill subsidiary in the 1980s.
That firm, Lankford & Reed, claims that Hill International also hired James Biden, now 73, in 2011 to negotiate a secret deal with the Saudis to settle the dispute – and get out of paying Lankford the 40% cut outlined in their contract.
In July 2017, Thomas Sullivan, a former Treasury Department official-turned-private investigator hired by Lankford, drove to James Biden’s home in suburban Philadelphia to discuss his role with Hill.
According to Sullivan’s sworn statement, James Biden said he was hired to handle Hill’s “business development” and had been assigned to help with the company’s interests in Saudi Arabia.
The first brother added that he was often tapped to represent Hill in meetings “because, of course, the name didn’t hurt,” Sullivan recalled.
James Biden also told Sullivan he had attended a February 2012 meeting with Saudi officials at which Hill would receive “final payment” for the desalination plant.
Biden added that he had attended the meeting “because of his position and relationship” with his older brother, then Barack Obama’s No. 2.
According to the president’s sibling, Hill’s payment for its subsidiary’s work “would be made in both cash and ‘a very large amount'” of future business, Sullivan said.
After the meeting, Sullivan alleged, James Biden’s wife Sara walked him to his car and
revealed that her husband and his older brother Joe were very close, and that they told each other everything.”
Sara Biden also told Sullivan that “he doesn’t like us talking to people,” the ex-Treasury man recalled.
“I didn’t ask for a further explanation,” Sullivan said, “since I was looking at two large men in dark suits, in a big black sedan parked on a side street looking directly into their house down the walkway I had just exited. I thought they were some type of security, probably Secret Service.”
In a separate affidavit, Lankford & Reed partner Thomas Lankford alleged that his firm and the Saudis had tentatively agreed on a settlement of Hill’s claims worth around $100 million by November 2011. However, after James Biden’s February 2012 meeting with Saudi officials in Riyadh, Hill initially “went dark” — then claimed that the Saudis had backed off on the settlement.
According to Lankford,
Hill International CEO Irvin Richter had told him that he had retained James Biden because the Saudis “would not dare stiff the brother of the Vice-President who would be instrumental to the deal.”
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https://nypost.com/2023/02/14/jim-bi...-ties-report/?
The Senile Biden scandal is so vast and so criminal it’s hard for many people to take it all in!
Joe
