FBI secretly taped James Biden as it probed attorney who paid $100K to his consulting firm: report
By Social Links for Ryan King
Published Dec. 17, 2023, 5:20 p.m. ET
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.
Seeking some $368 billion, Scruggs needed Congress to waive antitrust provisions as part of a settlement deal. Joe Biden in 1997, initially said, he was “not yet convinced that this settlement is a good deal.”
Despite initially being reluctant, Joe Biden, who sat on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee as the ranking member, ultimately became one of its most significant backers.
Ultimately, the bill failed to clear Congress. Biden, at the time, cited an intense campaign by the tobacco industry that he claimed swayed Republicans.
more
https://nypost.com/2023/12/17/news/fbi-bribery-inquiry-taped-james-biden-who-took-money-from-attorney-pursuing-tobacco-bill-in-congress/
