SPARTANBURG, South Carolina — Joe Biden told reporters that he’s never once discussed business with family members — direct or extended — amid reports that both his son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden used his position in government for personal gains.
“I’ve never discussed with my son or my brother, or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period. And what I will do is the same thing we did in my administration, there will be an absolute wall between personal and private and the government,” the former vice president at a South Carolina campaign stop. “There wasn’t any hint of scandal when we were there. That’s why I never talk with my son or my brother or anyone else, even distant family, about their business interest.”
According to one report, a longtime donor of Joe Biden financed a second mortgage for the vice president’s younger brother, James, worth $500,000, in order to pay for a Florida vacation home.
The Ukrainian American businessman John Hynansky, who has donated nearly six figures to the former vice president’s campaigns over the years, in 2015 allegedly lent James Biden the half-million dollar sum for a Florida vacation home on an island only accessible by boat.
[Related: Rudy Giuliani presses Ukraine to investigate Biden family]
And Hunter Biden, the candidate’s oldest son, years before had opened a lobbying shop with clients that often had business in front of his father’s Senate committees.
During Joe Biden’s second term as vice president, in 2013, Hunter Biden reportedly arranged a Beijing meeting between him and Jonathan Li, a Chinese businessman who ran the equity fund Bohai Capital. Li was in a separate business arrangement with Hunter Biden.
