Peter Schweizer: 5 Bidens 'cashed in' while Joe was VP

Hunter, Joe and Jill Biden at the Jan. 20, 2009, inauguration. (Wikimedia Commons)

Five members of Joe Biden's family "cashed in while he was vice president," charges investigative reporter Peter Schweizer in his new book "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite."

"The ship really came in as far as these financial deals when he was vice president," said Schweizer in an interview Monday night on the Fox News Channel's "Hannity."

Hunter Biden's profiting from a Ukrainian firm while his father was President Obama's point man for Ukraine policy is at the center of the impeachment charges against President Trump. And Hunter Biden also is under scrutiny for the $1.5 billion deal his company obtained from a Chinese-government-owned firm shortly after a trip to Beijing on Air Force Two with his father, who also was in charge of U.S. policy in China.

It was Schweizer who brought those apparent conflicts of interest to light in his previous book "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends."

Now, in "Profiles in Corruption," he presents evidence that Joe Biden's son-in-law Howard, brothers James and Frank, and sister Valerie also cashed in on the vice presidency.

See Schweizer's interview with Sean Hannity:

In a column for the New York Post feature an excerpt from his book, Schweizer observes that political figures have long used their families "to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment."

Biden, in his new book, "emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain."

The deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, U.S. taxpayer dollars.

His evidence, he says, refutes the claim Joe Biden's made when the subject came up in 2019.

"I never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about their business interests. Period," Biden said.

Schweizer reacts: "As we will see, this is far from the case."

Brother Joe

Joe Biden has been close to his younger brother James since James served as finance chair of Joe's 1972 Senate campaign. After Joe became vice president, James was a welcomed guest at the White House.

Sometimes the visits, Schweizer write in his book, "dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president."

One example is James' hiring by the construction management firm HillStone International after its president visited the White House and met with Biden adviser Michele Smith in the Office of the Vice President.

"James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but that did not seem to matter to HillStone," Schweizer notes.

James Biden was joining HillStone just as the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months after James was hired, the firm announced a contract generating $1.5 billion over three years to build 100,000 homes in Iraq. HillStone also received a $22 million federal government contract to manage a construction project for the State Department.

David Richter, son of the parent company's founder, told investors at a private meeting, according to a Schweizer source in attendance, that securing government contracts is much easier when you have "the brother of the vice president as a partner."

Daughter Ashley

An investment company called StartUp Health announced its launch in 2011 in the Oval Office, where its leaders met with President Obama and Vice President Biden.

A day later, the new company was featured at a large health care tech conference run by the Department of Health and Human Services. And StartUp Health executives became regular visitors to the White House, attending events in 2011, 2014 and 2015.

How did the company gain such access?

Schweizer points out the chief medical officer of StartUp Health, Howard Krein, is married to Joe Biden’s youngest daughter, Ashley.

Joe Biden helped Krein promote his company through his last months in the White House, including at a StartUp Health members conference in which 250 people got to chat in a closed session with the vice president.

Brother Frank

Vice President Joe Biden's March 2009 trip to Costa Rica for a one-on-one visit with President Oscar Arias "came at a fortuitous time for his brother Frank, who was busy working deals in the country," Schweizer writes.

Just months after the visit, a new multilateral partnership "to reform Real Estate in Latin America" among Frank Biden and others was announced.

Joe Biden at his presidential kickoff rally in Philadelphia, May 2019 (Wikimedia Commons)

"The Costa Rican government was eager to cooperate with the vice president’s brother," Schweizer writes. "As it happened, Joe Biden had been asked by President Obama to act as the administration’s point man in Latin America and the Caribbean."

Despite lacking experience in building such developments, Frank's project received support from the highest levels of the Costa Rican government.

In June 2014, Vice President Biden announced the launch of the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative calling for increasing access to financing for Caribbean energy projects that he strongly supported.

"After Joe Biden brought together leaders for CESI, brother Frank's firm Sun Fund Americas announced that it was 'engaged in projects and is in negotiations with governments of other countries in the [Caribbean] region for both its Solar and Waste to Energy development services,'" Schweizer writes.

Frank Biden's Sun Fund Americas later announced that it had signed a power purchase agreement to build a 20-megawatt solar facility in Jamaica.

Joe's sister

During his years in the Senate, Schweizer writes, Biden's family "benefited financially in other ways as he leveraged political power."

Joe's sister Valerie ran all of his Senate campaigns, as well as his presidential runs in 1988 and 2008.

"But she was also a senior partner in a political messaging firm named Joe Slade White & Company; the only two executives listed at the firm were Joe Slade White and Valerie," he writes.

"The firm received large fees from the Biden campaigns that Valerie was running. Two and a half million dollars in consulting fees flowed to her firm from Citizens for Biden and Biden For President Inc. during the 2008 presidential bid alone."

Joe Slade White & Company worked for Biden campaigns over 18 years.

'Three-layer cake of corruption'

Schweizer's book also presents evidence of corruption by Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., among others.

In an interview Tuesday with "Fox & Friends, he said there is a "three-layer cake of corruption" with Warren.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (CNN screenshot)

He pointed out she was actually a government consultant paid by the U.S. Congress in the 1990s to rewrite bankruptcy laws.

"OK, that's all fine and good, but she did the typical Washington crony move: She cashed in," he said. "After she rewrote those laws, what did she do? She went to the corporations who would benefit from the law and said, 'Hire me, and I will help you interpret the law that I myself wrote.'"

Schweizer said she "made millions of dollars doing that."

Warren also has a daughter whose financed her business and obtained advisers "from the very investment banks that Elizabeth Warren’s TARP Committee was bailing out."

WND reported earlier Tuesday Warren's son-in-law produced a film funded by Iran's Islamic regime

Schweizer said Klobuchar has "mastered the art of shaking down contributors and then pushing their legislation."

Klobuchar was a prosecutor before she was a U.S. senator.

She "did not go after people that were donors of hers, who were clearly engaged in corruption."

"And as a U.S. senator, she has mastered the art of shaking down contributors and then pushing their legislation," Schweizer writes. "There are instances where dozens of executives from a corporation over a three-day period will give her the donation, and then literally a few days later, she introduces legislation on their behalf."