The Washington Post just released newly-resurfaced audio tapes in which Joe Biden’s brother, James, is caught engaging in influence peddling as part of an FBI probe into unrelated bribery scheme.
The audio recordings are from a 2007 FBI investigation, not into Joe Biden or his brother, but into attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, who was jailed for trying to bribe a Mississippi judge.
Scruggs was a well-known attorney who was trying to get a big tobacco settlement through Congress in the late 90s.
Back then, he approached James Biden’s consultancy firm, which James ran with his wife Sara, with the intention of getting Joe Biden, a senator at the time, to lobby for the settlement – and, apparently paid him $100K for these “consultancy services.”
CORRUPTION: Newly discovered FBI recordings caught James Biden on wiretaps negotiating with law firm ensnared in bribery scheme. The firm had paid him $100K to lobby Joe Biden to vote for a bill (Joe did). At the time he was trying to start a joint venture with the firm. pic.twitter.com/Fc7fXOE5yl
— @amuse (@amuse) December 17, 2023
Now, this sounds like typical D.C. corruption, but it’s not where the story ends.
As part of the 2007 investigation into Scruggs for bribing a judge, audio captured Scruggs’ associate Tim Balducci speaking to James Biden, whom he was about to partner with in a “consultancy group.”
In the clip, Balducci was says to Biden, “I told him about the real Washington presence, that this was not going to be a bullshit, you know, a shingle hung somewhere in the window. That this was a real deal, that Sara was coming on, you know, as a named partner, an equity share in the venture, that we were changing the name of the firm to include her. … Hunter was going to be involved, and you were going to be involved.”
Listen for yourself:
Listen: James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes.
In the article, WAPO is accusing Joe Biden, James Biden, and his wife, Sara Biden, of being involved in influence peddling:
"What emerges is a tale of money, politics and influence, stretching from Mississippi to the… pic.twitter.com/K0466W0LRq
— Eddie (@ICU1010) December 17, 2023
A separate recording picked up James Biden himself speaking to, presumably Balducci, about his potential role as consultant for the chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians who wanted to use tribal land to open a casino,
“You know my hesitancy to be a, you know, an opportunist if everybody is jumping on…There’s nothing wrong with opportunist. Sara just rolled her eyes at me. So, but being a whore about it, OK, you know, like everybody just jumping in, like, ‘Let me do your insurance, let me do your legal.’”
Here’s what the original Washington Post report had to say:
Five weeks after the Oxford fundraiser, James Biden was on the phone with Balducci discussing the final details about the firm’s creation, according to court records.
That same day, Balducci had handed an envelope containing the first of two $20,000 payments to a Mississippi judge who was slated to rule in a case involving Scruggs, according to court records. The filings say $26.5 million in legal fees was at stake, and Scruggs wanted the judge to give him a favorable settlement.
“Lord have mercy,” said the judge, Henry Lackey, as he took the envelope, according to court records.
Balducci did not know that Lackey was working with the FBI.
Weeks earlier, Balducci had floated the idea of Lackey’s being hired after retirement as “of counsel” to Balducci’s law firm, according to the judge’s statement to federal officials. Lackey viewed that offer as a quid pro quo to get him to favorably settle the Scruggs suit, leading him to contact the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office, according to court records. The tip led the FBI to begin recording Balducci’s phone calls, including some with James Biden; the tapes provide insight into how James and his wife explored business opportunities.
ADVERTISEMENTAfter handing off the cash, Balducci drove to Scruggs’s office, where he sought support from the trial lawyer for the new consulting firm Balducci was trying to form with Patterson and Sara Biden.
Afterward, Balducci called James Biden to say how well the meeting with Scruggs had gone, laying out how the consulting firm would have not only Sara Biden as a named partner, but also would have the involvement of James Biden and Hunter Biden, the senator’s son.
“I told him we had formalized our relationship with you guys,” Balducci told James Biden, according to the FBI recording reviewed by The Post. “I told him about the real Washington presence, that this was not going to be a bullshit, you know, a shingle hung somewhere in the window. That this was a real deal, that Sara was coming on, you know, as a named partner, an equity share in the venture, that we were changing the name of the firm to include her. … Hunter was going to be involved, and you were going to be involved.”
Balducci told James Biden that Scruggs was enthusiastic, quoting the trial lawyer as saying, “With the political connections you guys are putting together now, I know you’re going to do really, really well.”
In another call later that day, James Biden told Balducci that he had just concluded a “great conversation” with Scruggs. Biden said he told Scruggs that he was “really excited” that Scruggs was involved, and recounted that the trial lawyer told him, “I think you can make a lot of money.”
Scruggs said in the interview with the The Post that while he agreed to speak positively about the venture to help give it a boost, he never planned to be part of it or invest in it. A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment. Lackey, the judge, has since died, but Patterson said in an interview that he did not think Lackey “could have conceivably known” about Balducci’s interactions with James Biden.
James Biden can be heard on subsequent tapes discussing a number of possible deals. One idea was to work for the chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which had filed an application with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to use 100 acres for a $375 million casino, which needed state and federal approval. James Biden said it seemed to be an ideal opportunity.
“You know my hesitancy to be a, you know, an opportunist if everybody is jumping on him,” James Biden said on tape on Oct. 15, 2007, referring to the tribal leader. “There’s nothing wrong with opportunist. Sara just rolled her eyes at me. So, but being a whore about it, okay, you know, like everybody just jumping in, like, ‘Let me do your insurance, let me do your legal.’” He said the tribe had been “used and abused,” and the “beauty” of his proposed arrangement was that he could work through people who are “not scumbags” and who would vouch for him.
ADVERTISEMENTFishman, the lawyer for James Biden, said his client “was discussing a potential opportunity to sell insurance to the Choctaw tribe, but he never pursued that business.”
Just as the plan for the Patterson, Balducci and Biden firm was about to be publicly unveiled, Balducci was confronted by the FBI about the payment to the judge. He promptly agreed to flip, according to court records. The FBI sent Balducci, wearing a wire, to Scruggs’s office, where their conversations were recorded. A few weeks later, the FBI raided Scruggs’s office and seized some computer hard drives. The next day, Scruggs and his son, Zach, agreed to surrender at the federal courthouse, just a few blocks away.
The New York Post also commented on the recently resurfaced recordings:
President Biden’s brother James was secretly recorded by the FBI during a bribery investigation into a Mississippi trial attorney who shelled out $100,000 to his consulting firm in the late 1990s, a report said on Sunday.
Richard Scruggs, the trial attorney, hired James and Sara Biden’s DC consulting firm while seeking to gin up support for tobacco legislation being contemplated by Congress in 1998, the Washington Post reported.
Neither James, 74, nor his brother President Joe Biden, 81, were implicated in any major criminal wrongdoing in the case. But the revelation comes amid an impeachment probe into alleged influence-peddling by the president’s family members.
“I probably wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t the senator’s brother,” Scruggs told the Washington Post about why he forked over cash to James Biden’s firm.
“Jim was never untoward about his influence,” he added. “He didn’t brag about it or talk about it. He didn’t have to. He was the man’s brother.”
Scruggs, who was later sent to prison over a separate bribery scheme, had been closing in on a deal to push the tobacco companies to cough up billions of dollars in a lawsuit alleging they withheld information that their products were addictive.
The evidence of Biden Family corruption (that Lindsey Graham says is not there, by the way…) just keeps piling up.
What do you make of this?
BREAKING FROM WPOST: "James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe." "Unrelated"! Then-Senator Joe Biden changed position on tobacco settlement legislation after corrupt trial lawyer beneficiary of said legislation paid his brother $100k. "The White…
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 17, 2023
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