The Biden administration only took over the White House last week, but it’s already had to grapple with a web of ethical dilemmas created by the complicated business dealings of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s families.
Biden’s campaign was dogged by allegations that his youngest son, lobbyist-investor Hunter, profited from the Biden name, specifically in China and Ukraine. His lucrative role with oligarch-linked Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, for instance, was central to former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
And during the transition, it was revealed Hunter was under a federal tax investigation dating back to 2018 into his foreign associations and accusations of money laundering.
Now Biden Inc. is causing problems for the White House.
This week, President Biden’s middle brother Frank featured in an ad for his Florida law firm, the Berman Law Group, touting his ties to the administration.
The ad was quickly followed by reports that during the campaign, Biden warned his brother, who consults through the legal practice, to “watch yourself.”
“Don’t get sucked into something that would, first of all, hurt you,” the president said.
Frank Biden has pushed back on the claim he’s made money off of his brother.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined “to get into private conversations between the president and his family” during her briefing on Friday.
“It’s the White House’s policy that the president’s name should not be used in connection with any commercial activities to suggest, or in any way, they could reasonably be understood to imply his endorsement or support,” she told reporters.
This week’s reporting isn’t the first time Frank Biden has traded on his last name, and he’s not the only Biden brother to cash in.
Joe Biden’s youngest brother James, another lobbyist-entrepreneur, has created related issues, including through hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors. He and Hunter took over the group in 2006.
“Don’t worry about investors,” James Biden reportedly told executives on their first day. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”
James Biden has disputed the report, and Paradigm has since been wound down.
James Biden was also questioned as part of a recent criminal investigation into bankrupted Pennsylvania hospital network Americore Health. He was attacked, too, by Trump during the campaign over a construction deal he struck in Iraq when his brother was former President Barack Obama’s vice president.
During the campaign, Joe Biden promised to build an “absolute wall” between the White House and his family so that his relatives’ businesses would be conducted with “appropriate distance from the presidency and government.”
Another campaign pledge, that no one in Biden’s family would have a West Wing office, was dredged up this week as well after it was confirmed his sister Valerie, a key figure in all of his campaigns, wouldn’t have real estate near the Oval Office.
Joe Biden’s warning to Frank concerning business conflicts of interest isn’t an isolated incident for the White House. Biden transition lawyers reportedly had a similar talk to one member of Harris’s family.
Meena Harris, the vice president’s niece, was reminded by Biden’s team this month that she can’t profit off the name of the former California senator after Meena’s company, Phenomenal, a women’s lifestyle brand and activism network, formed a collaboration with Beats By Dre. On top of that, the daughter of Kamala Harris’s sister Maya released a book called Ambitious Girl in January after publishing another book last year titled Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea.
And this week, it also became known that Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter with second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Ella, inked a modeling contract with leading agency IMG. Ella Emhoff is studying fashion at New York City’s Parsons School of Design.
During the transition, Biden’s aides said his family would agree to a code of conduct to avoid any conflicts of interest. But while Biden signed an executive order shortly after being sworn in on Jan. 20 that applied to federal employees, few details have been provided regarding a framework for his relatives.
Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project On Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization focused on uncovering conflicts, said Frank Biden’s ad may not have been illegal, but it was certainly “inappropriate.”
“In the past, we’ve seen firewalls established to ensure that those family relationships weren’t used for personal or professional gain,” he said. “But it really falls on the senior officials to kind of police that and keep the families in check.”
Amey suggested that the White House take detailed meeting notes when applicable, make relevant calendars public, and lay out in a letter or proclamation to federal employees that “special access or favoritism” to Biden and Harris family members was “frowned upon.”
The new administration’s violations are less legally clear-cut than complaints made against Trump and his family because Biden and Harris’s relatives aren’t employed by the government, according to Amey. Former first daughter Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner were both advisers.
Amey predicted scrutiny of Biden, in particular, would be greater after the drama surrounding Hunter.
“They’re not coming into this with a clean slate,” he said. “How long those conflicts of interest stay in the news will be determined on how they’re handled and what is done to prevent them in the future.”
Steven Mintz, a California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo professor emeritus, recommended that Congress pass legislation formalizing a code of conduct for first and second families. In the meantime, Biden should implore his relatives to rely on former President George W. Bush’s litmus test, Mintz told the Washington Examiner.
“The person involved, like a family member, should ask if the behavior in question was a front page story in the newspaper,” he said.
