More magic thinking: 'Yellen blames 'aftermath' of COVID for Bidenomics' unpopularity'

 Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the "aftermath" of the COVID-19 pandemic is part of the reason the administration's "Bidenomics" messaging isn't hitting home with Americans.

In an interview with Wall Street Journal's chief economics correspondent Nick Timiraos, Yellen was asked why she thinks the "Bidenomics" messaging isn't sticking and whether she was concerned about it.

Yellen pointed to the "aftermath" of the pandemic as the reason why the Biden administration's economic messaging isn't landing, saying she thinks "we've been through a lot."

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the "aftermath of COVID" was why the administration's "Bidenomics" messaging isn't hitting home with Americans. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein / AP Newsroom)

"The pandemic caused an enormous amount of disruption of people's lives, and we're still in the aftermath of what's been a serious shock," Yellen said on Tuesday.

"And we've had serious global shocks. And, although prices are rising at a much slower pace than they were, inflation is substantially off its highs," she continued.

"The level of prices of some things that people buy and are important to them are higher," the Treasury secretary said. "A good example would be rents. Rents have gone up considerably."

"Bidenomics" – the administration's often ridiculed attempt to brand President Biden's economic policies ahead of 2024 – has yet to take hold in the hearts and minds of many Americans.

Half of Americans believe their financial outlook has deteriorated since the 2020 election, a blow to Biden as he attempts to center his re-election campaign on the eponymous "Bidenomics."  

A survey published by Bankrate last month shows that 50% of Americans say their financial situation has gotten worse since the 2020 presidential election. By comparison, just 21% think their financial situation has improved, while 26% believe it is unchanged.

"The plight of the economy over the next 12 months may help to dictate whether it was wise, or not, for President Biden to trumpet the branding of ‘Bidenomics,'" said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.

Among Americans who are feeling pessimistic about their financial outlook, about half – 45% – blame Biden and his economic policies. Another 35% think Congress is responsible, while 27% identified the Federal Reserve as the culprit.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/yellen-blames-aftermath-covid-bidenomics-unpopularity-americans

NObamacare? Americans Are Skipping Doctor Visits Due To Costs

 Twenty-eight percent of U.S. adults were forced to skip or delay medical care in 2022 because they could not afford to pay for it, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Board.

As Statista's Anna Fleck reports, this is an increase from the 24 percent in 2021 and the highest share of U.S. adults since before the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was introduced back in 2014.

Dental care was the most frequently missed form of healthcare, having been skipped due to costs by 21 percent of respondents in the prior 12 months to the survey. It was followed by seeing a doctor or specialist (16 percent), forgoing prescription medicine (10 percent), follow-up care (10 percent), mental health care or counseling (10 percent). Respondents could select multiple answers to this question.

According to the FRB, the increase in the share of people delaying or avoiding medical care is likely at least partly due to high inflation in the U.S., as patients tried to find ways to cut back on expenses. This matches up to the data in the report, which shows that those with a higher family income and more of a buffer zone were less likely to have skipped or delayed medical care. For those with a family income of less than $25,000, 38 percent of adults went without some form of medical care because of the costs, versus just 11 percent of adults making $100,000 or more.

Similarly, family income seems to correlate with reported levels of health. The FRB explains that for those with an income at $25,000 per year or less, 75 percent of respondents said they were in good health. For those earning $100,000 plus, the figure was 91 percent.

Other surveys tell the same tale. For example, Gallup researchers found that there had been a 12 percentage point increase in the share of Americans reporting that they or a family member had postponed medical treatment between 2022 and the year before, bringing the latest figure to 38 percent - the highest level since 2001. In this study, lower-income adults, younger adults and women in the U.S. were more likely than other respondents to say they or someone in their family have delayed care for a serious medical condition. Meanwhile, a 2023 survey by the Commonwealth Fund found that 46 percent of those with low or average incomes had skipped or delayed needed care because of the cost.

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/nobamacare-americans-are-skipping-doctor-visits-due-costs

There's Nothing Crazy About Donald Trump's Pledge To Replace Obamacare

 Former President Donald Trump made waves late last month when he announced that he was "seriously looking" at replacing Obamacare if elected to a second term.

Democrats' reaction to this announcement was unsurprising. President Joe Biden leapt into action to defend his former boss's signature healthcare law, claiming that Trump's plan would "rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans."

More surprisingly, several Republicans met Trump's pledge with skepticism. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said he'd "want to know what the proposal is" before supporting Obamacare repeal.

That's reasonable. Republicans have plenty of ideas for providing Americans with affordable, high-quality health care, even if they are typically shy about sharing them. By removing regulatory barriers that render insurance unaffordable and encouraging competition and transparency throughout the healthcare market, lawmakers can advance an alternative to Obamacare that even skeptics should be able to get behind.

It's been roughly a decade since the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges launched. In that time, it's hardly lived up to its name. Individual market premiums more than doubled between 2013 and 2019. This year, the average unsubsidized Obamacare premium cost enrollees $605 per month.

And while Obamacare's defenders boast that most Americans do not pay such a steep price, it's only because of the massive subsidies the law provides. This year, federal subsidies for nongroup coverage were $92 billion. Over the next 10 years, total subsidies for coverage in this market will eclipse $1 trillion.

Such astronomical subsidy spending is made all the more egregious by the fact that it is precisely Obamacare's regulations—including its mandate that all health plans cover a list of 10 "essential" health benefits—that have caused premiums to skyrocket.

A federal program designed to make health care affordable that has the opposite effect—and spends billions of taxpayer dollars to cover up that fact—is clearly a failure.

There are better ways to help Americans access affordable, quality health care.

Take low-cost short-term, limited-duration health plans, which are exempt from Obamacare's cost-inflating rules and regulations. The president calls them "junk insurance." But as the Manhattan Institute's Chris Pope has shown, short-term plans can offer more generous coverage than exchange plans at a fraction of the cost, even for people with pre-existing conditions.

The Trump administration lifted Obama-era restrictions on these plans, making it possible for insurers to sell policies that lasted up to 364 days and that could be renewed for a maximum total duration of three years. The Biden administration has since proposed rules that would cap short-term plans at three months, with an option for a one-month renewal.

Democrats don't want people to have options aside from those on the exchanges. Some blue states, including New York and California, have banned short-term plans outright.

An alternative to Obamacare must also expand access to health savings accounts. These vehicles allow people to set aside money tax-free for future healthcare expenses. The proceeds also grow tax-free.

By giving people control over their healthcare dollars, HSAs empower consumers to shop around for the best-value care.

Lawmakers have introduced measures that would more than double the yearly individual and family contribution limits for HSAs and allow Medicare beneficiaries to contribute to these accounts as well.

For people to use their HSA proceeds most effectively, providers will have to be transparent about their prices.

Most hospitals are not complying with federal price transparency rules. But that won't slide when patients are hunting for deals. Providers will have to embrace transparency or watch customers take their business elsewhere. As providers begin competing with each other to offer the best deals, friendliest customer service, and most navigable menus, prices will fall—and the patient experience will improve across the board.

President Trump's call to repeal Obamacare may seem like a political provocation. But that doesn't change the fact that there are better alternatives in reach. Hopefully lawmakers realize this—and remain open to supporting the reforms outlined above. There is the possibility of doing so much better for patients than the status quo.

Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All, (Encounter 2020).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2023/12/11/theres-nothing-crazy-about-donald-trumps-pledge-to-replace-obamacare

Congressional Oversight Long Overdue to Ensure 340B Program is Working for Patients

 The healthcare landscape is becoming increasingly hostile to patients. Nearly three out of four individuals today owe debt to hospitals and more than 10% of patients carry medical debt that can lead to a cycle of financial hardships, stress and poor health outcomes impacting aspects of life including employment, housing, and food security. Decades after Congress drew up the 340 Drug Pricing Program as a safety net to help the most vulnerable among us, it’s beyond time that Congress find common ground to increase oversight of the 340B program and ensure patients – not hospitals – are benefitting from the program to manage their health.

The 340B program was designed to enable non-profit healthcare providers to purchase outpatient prescription drugs at discounted prices, and then use the savings to help patients by offering care or medications at low or zero cost. Since its creation, the 340B program has experienced massive growth with little evidence that it is actually benefiting vulnerable patients across the country as intended. In 2022 alone the program exceeded $100 billion (yes, billion) in sales. As thousands of hospitals have joined the program, there is growing evidence that shows the system is wrought with waste and abuse, with healthcare systems getting richer and patient debt getting deeper, leaving patients to ask: What about me?

Nationally, in 2021 the average charity care ratio – or percent of a hospital’s operating expenses going toward charity care – hit a 10-year low. The national average of charity care rates fell to just 2.3% in a decade, even while the number of participating hospitals in 340B grew to an all-time high. Rather than providing relief to patients, hospitals and some health centers are leveraging their participation in 340B to increase executive compensation and expand their networks into affluent communities, boosting services in wealthier communities while failing to serve communities in need, or in some instances providing the capital for expanding business into other sectors like housing, with potentially devastating consequences.

Increasingly, federal and state policymakers are investigating how the 340B program is being put into use, and the results are often shocking. This fall, the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee launched an investigation into Bon Secours, the nation’s largest charity hospital chain that took advantage of the 340B program, buying cancer drugs at a discounted rate and selling those same drugs at a seven-fold increase. Numerous states have introduced legislation to address the shocking level of corruption in 340B and call for more transparency, including the Virginia General Assembly who introduced legislation after the Bon Secours investigation.

While policymakers are more frequently investigating abuses of the 340B program, the courts continue to side with providers due to lack of clarity in the statutory language – fueling more expansion of a program already vulnerable to abuse. As the Food and Drug Law Institute asked, “Why rob banks when you’ve got 340B?” Indeed, a recent court decision in Genesis Healthcare, Inc. v. Becerra highlights the point when the judge declared that Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the overseer of the 340B program, cannot impose restrictions on patient definition beyond the language in the statute. The decision demonstrates a lack of understanding of the serious concerns with the 340B program and has the potential to make well-documented abuses in the 340B program even worse. The decision also highlights the continued need for meaningful reforms to reign in these abuses and restore the charitable intent of the 340B program.

It's understandable that legislators can sometimes be intimidated when it comes to criticizing hospitals and health systems. Often times, hospitals are the largest employers in Congressional districts and even whole states. That does not change the need for legislators to remember the need to prioritize patient access to charitable care over the economic interests of business leaders in the district, especially in the face of such rampant exploitation of the 340B program.

The lack of 340B oversight by Congress, and confusion in statutory language for such a large federal program, lends the program to abuse and a patchwork of judicial and state legislative efforts that often do more harm than good. Members of Congress must work together in a bipartisan manner to reform the 340B program to require uniform transparency and greater accountability from all covered entities, contract pharmacies, and middlemen touching the program. Legislative efforts must be focused on more oversight to ensure dollars saved benefit patients, not bottom lines.

In the absence of congressional action, 340B will continue to grow and be exploited for profits by bad actors to the detriment of patients. By clarifying the intent of the program and putting greater guardrails in place, we can ensure 340B actually helps the most vulnerable Americans among us.

Jen Laws is the President & CEO of the Community Access National Network (CANN), a national non-profit organization that works to improve access to healthcare services and supports for people living with HIV/AIDS and/or viral hepatitis across the country for the last 27 years.

https://www.realclearhealth.com/blog/2023/12/12/congressional_oversight_long_overdue_to_ensure_340b_program_is_working_for_patients_998138.html

Who Is Sara Biden? Joe’s In-Law Emerges as Central Figure in Foreign Cash Deals

 Trouble has followed Sara Catherine Jones since she married into the Biden family almost three decades ago.

Not long after her 1995 wedding to Jim Biden, she took a job with one of his brother Joe’s Senate donors, who later accused her of “fraud” and “unjust enrichment,” according to court records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations. In the years since, she and her husband have been accused of reneging on debts and failing to pay their taxes, court and property records show. Like their nephew, first son Hunter Biden, they have reportedly sold the promise of access to their powerful relative to companies, several of which have gone bankrupt, some of which are tied to foreign countries hostile to the United States.

Now, Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal.

Joe Biden in 2018, the same year his sister-in-law Sara, husband of James, (both in top photo) signed over to him hundreds of thousands of dollars in suspect funds.

AP

GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as “loan repayment.” Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks “were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China.”

“The Committees require you to provide details of these payments and other related matters,” the chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees said in a joint letter they sent to her last month demanding she make herself available for a transcribed interview. In addition, they sent a subpoena to her husband for testimony and information.

Although Hunter and Jim Biden’s questionable business dealings – and their possible blessing from the president – are drawing increasing scrutiny, Sara Biden has drawn little attention until now. But court records and other documents show she has been a central player in the Biden family business for decades. They show how her and her husband’s desire for a lifestyle they could not quite afford has repeatedly led them to form relationships with shady figures and enterprises that often ended in lawsuits and even criminal investigations.

Looming over it all is Joe Biden. Documents recently obtained by government watchdog America First Legal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that Sara and Jim’s main business, the Lion Hall Group, shows up in more than 3,735 emails generated by the former Vice President Biden’s office. The sheer volume of communications concerning his brother and sister-in-law’s business appears to contradict Biden’s repeated claims over the years that he was never involved in, or even aware of, his family’s business dealings.

A Match Made in Kentucky

Owensboro (Ky.) Messenger-Inquirer

Sara Biden’s links to Joe Biden date back to the early 1990s, when she landed a committee job with his close personal friend, Sen. Wendell Ford, a Kentucky Democrat.

“Sen. Ford has been an important part of our family for a long time,” Joe Biden said after Ford died in 2015. “He gave Sara Jones Biden, from Owensboro, Ky., her first job on the Hill when she graduated from Duke Law School, and that’s how she met my brother Jimmy.”

Jimmy and Sara weren’t just sweethearts; they were also business partners – with a taste for high living.

In 1997, Sara and Jim Biden formed consulting firm Lion Hall Group with the help of Joe Biden’s old law partner, David Walsh, who acted as their registered agent, according to incorporation records they filed with the Delaware Department of State.

That same year, they bought an expensive home in the Philadelphia suburbs and struggled to make payments on the $650,000 mortgage, records show, even though a longtime Democratic fundraiser for then-Sen. Biden, Joel Boyarsky, loaned them as much as $200,000. In 1998, the IRS filed its first lien against their home to collect $145,000 in unpaid taxes.

Leonard Barrack, Philadelphia attorney: His firm accused Sara and Lion Hall Group of “fraud,” “unjust enrichment,” and “breach of contract.”

Wikimedia

In 2000, they borrowed $353,000 from another Biden donor – Leonard Barrack, a Philadelphia attorney who a few years earlier had agreed to hire Sara Biden at Jim’s urging for $300,000 per year, according to court and other records. Barrack would soon regret helping them out.

According to a lawsuit he filed against Sara Biden four years later, Barrack said Jim had convinced him that by hiring Sara as a partner, the Bidens would be able to attract clients to his law firm through their political connections.

“Jim Biden assured Barrack that he would be able to generate business for the Barrack Law Firm through his family name and his resemblance to his brother, United States Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware,” according to the 2004 complaint filed in Philadelphia County, Pa.

Instead, the document said, Sara Biden developed business opportunities for Lion Hall Group, where she served as president, a potential conflict of interest she allegedly never disclosed to Barrack.

The law firm, also known as Barrack, Rodos & Bacine, further alleged that she used its resources, including a travel budget, for personal benefit. The lawsuit said Sara Biden spent almost $250,000 to travel with her husband to Hawaii and Alaska and across Europe, including England, Ireland, France, and Italy. They even brought their son, Nicholas (now 26), and a nanny on some of the “lavish” trips.

“Contrary to Sara Biden’s representations, none of the foregoing trips generated any business for the Barrack Law Firm,” the suit stated. “The Bidens never intended to generate business opportunities for the Barrack Law Firm during their travels, using the trips instead for personal pleasure and to develop opportunities for Lion Hall.”

The couple also allegedly received a total of $500,000 in loans before Sara left the firm in 2003. These salary advances were never repaid, according to the legal complaint. The case, which charged Sara and Lion Hall Group with “fraud,” “unjust enrichment,” and “breach of contract,” was eventually settled. The terms are undisclosed.

Sara and Hunter Biden were invited to join the board of this venture ...

NorthPoint Communications Group, Inc.

Sara Biden did not respond to requests for comment. However, in a law publication profile she asserted that she “co-founded” the Barrack law firm’s “institutional development and claims monitoring program.” Barrack apparently was unaware she was pursuing other outside interests while allegedly looting his firm.

In 2000, then-Vice President Al Gore and HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo announced a new $2 million partnership with NorthPoint Communications to help “bridge the digital divide” by providing broadband Internet access to more than 800 low-income urban neighborhoods.

... announced by Vice President Al Gore the same year he ran for president. It soon filed bankruptcy.

AP

Looking for political juice to help it win the licenses needed from the FCC for telecom development, NorthPoint invited Sara Biden to join its board, along with Hunter Biden. At the time, Hunter served as executive director of e-commerce policy at the Commerce Department, a Clinton-appointed position. It’s not known if his Aunt Sara did any lobbying for Northpoint, but Federal Election Commission records show that in 2000 she gave $1,200 to Northpoint’s PAC – People for Digital Competition.

Sara Biden does not appear in federal lobbying disclosure records as a registered lobbyist. Northpoint filed bankruptcy in 2001.

Dickie Scruggs: Mississippi trial attorney made introductions.

Dianne Bond/Wikimedia

Several years later, another Biden donor retained her and Lion Hall Group to lobby Sen. Biden and other senators for passage of a bill to help resolve tobacco-related medical claims. Although the bill, which Joe Biden supported, died in the Senate, the donor who pushed it – famous Mississippi trial attorney Dickie Scruggs – introduced Sara Biden to two associates, also Biden donors, who proposed bringing her into a potentially lucrative venture, according to legal documents.

Mississippi lawyers Steve Patterson and Timothy Balducci were looking to build a Democratic lobbying firm in Washington with global reach, and offered to make Sara a partner in the firm, which they planned to call “Patterson Balducci & Biden.” But the deal fell apart when Balducci and Patterson were indicted on federal bribery charges in an investigation that also ensnared Scruggs. After all three men went to federal prison, Biden was forced to return their donations.

The "Biden Bungalow": It accommodated the whole clan, including Joe, and a whole lot of debt.

RedFin.com

Sara and her husband had more trouble with the IRS in 2013, when the agency slapped them with another lien for unpaid taxes, this one totaling $589,000. They also faced state and local tax liens, property records show.

The couple had just purchased a $2.5 million luxury vacation home in Naples, Fla., which the entire Biden clan, including Joe, used. But they racked up debt renovating the home – dubbed the “Biden Bungalow” – and went in search of more bailout money.

John Hynansky: He helped out financing the "Biden Bungalow" ...

Winner

Owing a combined $700,000 in tax and vendor liens, they quickly found another Joe Biden supporter to rescue them. Over the next few years, millionaire car magnate and major Biden donor John Hynansky of Delaware floated Sara and Jim Biden “loans” totaling $900,000, records show.

During this same period, as then-Vice President Biden was the point person for U.S. policy in Ukraine, a federal lending agency – OPIC – authorized loans Hynansky’s company used to build a 7,300-square-foot Porsche dealership along the highway that connects downtown Kyiv to the Boryspil International Airport.

... and the feds helped out financing Hynansky's Ukraine expansion.

Winner Imports Ukraine

Mortgage records initially reported Jim and Sara Biden’s lender as “1018 PL, LLC,” obscuring Hynansky as the source of the loans. But the corporate entity is controlled by Hynansky, a 2018 document would later reveal.

The Bidens sold the waterfront house for a loss in 2018, and Hynansky released his lien on the property. However, Hynansky did not acknowledge full payment and satisfaction of the loans, according to the details laid out in documents recorded in Collier County, Fla.

Hynansky wasn’t their only white knight.

The Bidens joined this struggling hospital chain and it went on the critical list -- hemorrhaging cash.

Americore Health

Joey Langston: The convicted Mississippi lawyer made payments to the Bidens' Lion Hall Group, records show, shortly after unsuccessful efforts to clear his criminal record for bribery.

AP

As the Bidens struggled to find money to pay contractors for hurricane-related repairs on their beach home, and find a buyer for it, they went back to Joe’s old cronies from Mississippi. One of them, Mississippi lawyer Joey Langston, who had been sentenced to three years in federal prison for improperly trying to influence a judge, introduced them to the founder of Americore Health, who needed money to aggressively expand his chain of rural hospitals. Jim invoked his brother’s influence and said they had the political clout to drum up investment money, according to court documents and published reports. Impressed, Americore not only hired Lion Hall Group but loaned Jim and Sara Biden $650,000 for their personal use, even as the company hemorrhaged cash. The funds could have been used to help the company’s failing hospitals, which had to lay off hundreds of employees after Americore failed.

A photo of an Americore business card that James Biden reportedly handed out listing him as a “principal” in the company. A plaintiff described Biden as a con man.

Mark Hemingway/RCI

As soon as the couple received their loan payment, however, they stepped back from the venture and the promised investments never materialized, according to a lawsuit filed against Jim Biden and Lion Hall Group by Americore’s medical partners after it went bankrupt in 2019. In a declaration, one plaintiff described Jim Biden as a con man who repeatedly made false promises “on the Biden’s [sic] family name.” According to a recent court filing, Diverse Medical Management and Azzam Medical Services, which hoped to manage Americore hospitals, claimed “Biden and his wife, Sara Biden” made false assurances during a dinner they held at their home near Philadelphia that funding for the venture was forthcoming.

Meanwhile, Americore trustees have tried to claw back the $650,000 from the Bidens in bankruptcy court. An attorney for Jim Biden maintains that his client recently repaid Americore half the amount to settle the dispute.

After rural hospitals were forced to close their doors in Pennsylvania and other states, the FBI stepped in to investigate the Americore debacle as part of a criminal fraud investigation. While agents have questioned witnesses about Jim Biden’s role in the collapse, according to multiple reports, it’s unclear if his wife has been questioned. She did not reply to inquiries.

This $40,000 check from Sara to Joe Biden matches the 10% "held by H for the big guy” formula described on Hunter Biden's laptop. That is, Joe got $40,000 of $400,000 that Hunter got from the Chinese.

House Oversight Committee

Around the same time the couple was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from the crooked hospital deal, Hunter Biden was sending hundreds of thousands more to his Uncle Jim and Aunt Sara – and impeachment investigators on the Hill hope to question Sara about the origin and flow of these funds.

Starting in the summer of 2017, Hunter began sending large wire transfers to Sara and Jim’s Lion Hall Group – some of which ended up in Joe Biden’s bank account. The source of the funds was CEFC China Energy, a Chinese conglomerate tied to Chinese military intelligence. After a year, Lion Hall had received $1.4 million from Hunter Biden.

On Aug. 14, 2017, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall after receiving $400,000 from a joint account he held with CEFC. On Aug. 28, 2017, Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall’s account. Later the same day, she deposited it into her and Jim Biden’s personal checking account, according to bank records subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. On Sept. 3, 2017, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000 for a “loan repayment,” exactly 10% of the $400,000 – matching a “10 held by H for the big guy” arrangement Hunter had made for Joe in the Chinese venture that was discovered in emails from his abandoned laptop. 

Another unexplained "loan repayment" to Joe, this one for $200,000. The check is in Sara's handwriting though the signature appears to be James'.

House Oversight Committee

Another personal check to Joe made out in Sara’s handwriting, this one for $200,000, was cut on March 1, 2018 – the same day Jim Biden got an equal amount from Americore. “Loan repayment” was also filled in for the memo line of the check.

If there were in fact loans between Joe Biden and his sister-in-law, the White House has not explained the reason for them or provided any details about their terms, such as the interest rates charged. A White House spokesman has only said that the release of the bank records is part of “a smear campaign against the president” by Republican investigators.

“There is nothing more to these transactions,” said Paul Fishman, a lawyer representing Jim Biden, “and there is nothing wrong with them.”

However, the wire transfers raised red flags with Hunter’s bank, Wells Fargo, which asked about their “purpose” and also questioned the recipient, the Lion Hall Group. The bank noted the owner, Sara Biden, is a “relative [and] the address appears to be a residential address,” adding “What is the business type?”

Unsatisfied with Hunter’s explanations, the bank flagged the transactions as potential financial crimes, including money laundering, prompting the U.S. Treasury Department to issue a series of suspicious activity reports.

When her bank asked Sara Biden about the large transfers, she claimed the payments were for international consulting work (neither she nor her husband is registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents). However, she refused to provide any supporting documentation. The bank, in turn, closed the Lion Hall account, according to a 2020 Senate report.

Impeachment investigators tell RCI that they have subpoenaed related bank records from Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and Cathay Bank, in addition to Wells Fargo.

The Senate report noted that Jim and Sara Biden also benefitted from a $100,000 line of credit a CEFC executive opened for Hunter Biden in September 2017. After credit cards were issued to Hunter as well as his uncle and aunt, they went on “an extravagant global shopping spree.” Records show Hunter, Jim, and Sara Biden used the cards for plane tickets, hotel rooms, and electronic devices, among other things.

House impeachment investigators tell RCI that Sara Biden, who acted as an apparent financial conduit, may hold answers to whether the president also benefitted from the Chinese largesse as part of a “foreign influence-peddling scheme,” which they say could “compromise his decision-making and threaten national security.” They also seek to find out how much interaction Biden has had with her business, the Lion Hall Group, while in office.

Congressional investigators suspect that Lion Hall, which was incorporated by Joe Biden's old law partner, was set up to act as a pass-through vehicle to launder possible bribes to Joe Biden. They point out that Biden's Mississippi donor pal Joey Langston pumped almost $200,000 into Lion Hall for unspecified services while Biden was vice president. According to subpoenaed Lion Hall bank records, Langston Law Firm Consulting Inc. began wiring money to Lion Hall within weeks of Langston losing his appeal in February 2016 to have his conviction for bribing a judge thrown out. A federal judge also turned down his petition to have his criminal record cleared. Records show that between March 2016 and October 2016, Langston made four payments to Lion Hall totaling $187,000. Investigators have asked Langston to come in for questioning and explain the nature of the payments. Attempts to reach Langston for comment were unsuccessful.

Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/12/11/who_is_sara_biden_joes_in-law_emerges_as_central_figure_in_foreign_cash_deals_996942.html