President Joe Biden’s family members moved around money from their international business transactions in a way that, according to legal scholar Horace Cooper, was meant to obscure what they were really doing.
On May 10, House Republicans shared preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation of business transactions by members of Biden’s family. At a press conference, the Republican lawmakers described nearly two dozen Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) established by the Biden family members to receive payments from private clients, corporations, and foreign governments, including China, Ukraine, and Romania.
Cooper, a former constitutional law scholar and current senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, said this network of Biden business entities is worthy of scrutiny.
“These funds were forwarded in ways that clearly were intended to make it difficult to understand where the money was coming from, and where the money was going,” Cooper told NTD’s “Capitol Report.” “That constitutes fraud, that constitutes a behavior that had to have a number of participants to make sure that it occurred.”
Media Should Investigate: Cooper
While Republicans have detailed $10 million in transactions between the Biden family businesses and entities belonging to foreign nationals, that information alone may not prove a crime took place.The Biden White House has pushed back on the Republican investigation, describing it as part of a pattern of “unproven, politically motivated attacks.”
When asked about the burden of proof needed to demonstrate the Biden family members engaged in criminal activity, Cooper noted President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy Carter became the subject of scrutiny over his ties to the government of Libya. Billy Carter’s ties to the Libyan government became known after he registered as a foreign agent of Libya and disclosed a $220,000 payment he had received. The Carter administration admitted it had relied on Billy Carter’s Libyan ties to arrange a meeting with Libyan officials in hopes of gaining their help to negotiate an end to the Iran hostage crisis.
“That was a huge scandal, because our media recognized that someone that close to the president engaging in side-deals with a country which at the time was not a friend of the United States was something worth exploring,” Cooper said of the scandal involving the Carter family.
Cooper said the news media should apply a similar level of scrutiny to the Biden family transactions in countries where Joe Biden had high-level interactions while serving as the vice president.
“The bar here is we should have the media—mainstream, otherwise media—asking important questions about how this came about,” Cooper said “Why does it coincide with the period of time that you’re vice president? Oh, and also, why does it appear to correlate with the areas that you particularly had a lot of influence over when you were serving as vice president.”
The FBI’s Role
In addition to sharing their own investigative findings, Republican lawmakers have raised whistleblower claims that the FBI has an unclassified record alleging a “criminal scheme” involving Joe Biden and a foreign national during his time as vice president.Cooper suggested an impeachment process could compel the FBI to turn over the alleged documents.
“Let me just suggest this: if the stonewalling continues, there is one way to ensure that every court in the land is going to give to the investigating committee whatever it asks for, and that’s for articles of impeachment,” he said. “If this president does not wish for that type of intrusive investigation to occur, he should direct his subordinates to answer these important questions.”
