Sure, The Trump Family Is More Corrupt And More Disgusting-- But Would You Want To Hang With The Bidens?

Mini-Mike is suddenly getting so much max-vetting online, that Status Quo Joe, reeling from his disastrous performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and in the polls everywhere, may be slipping through the cracks. We can't have that, can we-- not before he and Bloomberg bloody each other to the point neither can walk out in public. So... hats off to ProPublica for publishing Daniel Golden's fine essay on Friday, The Benefits of Being Joe Biden’s Brother. Yes, the stinking corruption within the Status Quo Joe family is certainly not confined to young Hunter. The Biden family has enriched itself by trading on Status Quo Joe's name for decades-- all of them. Are they as rotten as the Trump spawn? Of course not... but that doesn't make them any less disgusting. And an election fought on whose family is more corrupt and respulsive? That's fighting on Trump's home turf and, regardless of any kind of objective truth, Biden would come out of that looking like a bowl of mashed potatoes with ketchup.

Golden wrote that Biden's crooked lobbyist brother Jim regularly turned to Status Quo Joe’s political network "for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing." There was a "well-synchronized tango that the Biden brothers have danced for half a century. They have pursued overlapping careers-- one a presidential aspirant with an expansive network of well-heeled Democratic donors; the other an entrepreneur who helped his brother raise political money and cultivated the same network to help finance his own business deals."

Jim Biden, 70, has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

“My sense is that Jim really has been trying to peddle himself on the Biden name for some time,” said Curtis Wilkie, who covered the Bidens as a Delaware political reporter.

...A source with knowledge of Jim Biden’s finances said that he and his wife, Sara, have sometimes failed to pay their taxes on time because “they are largely self-employed and sometimes have an unclear picture of how their year will end financially,” but that they have always paid in full, including interest and penalties.

Recognizing a potential minefield, Joe has avoided responsibility for or financial involvement in his brother’s ventures, according to longtime advisers. Yet on occasion, as Jim pursued opportunities, Joe met with his potential clients or partners, at Jim’s request.

In 2002, Joe addressed a Washington conference of the National Association of State Treasurers, whom Jim was courting on behalf of lawyers who wanted to represent state pension funds. “Jim offered that his brother,” who usually took the train home to Delaware in the evening, “was just happening to be in town,” said Pamela Taylor, then the group’s executive director. “He said: ‘He’s going to spend the night in D.C. Would you like him?’”

Taylor reached out to Joe, who had previously been invited by Delaware’s state treasurer but hadn’t firmly committed. Joe spoke to the group over breakfast, analyzing the prospects for war in Iraq. “It was perfect,” Taylor recalled.

Jim Biden has been at his older brother’s side at nearly every critical juncture in Joe’s personal and political life. As fundraiser for his brother’s first Senate race in 1972, he helped launch Joe’s political career... But Jim has also been a political vulnerability. While a plagiarism scandal put pressure on Joe to drop out of the presidential race in 1987, protecting his brother from reporters asking about Jim’s shaky finances was the final impetus for Joe’s withdrawal, according to Cramer. “They were going after Jimmy; it wasn’t just Joe anymore,” Cramer wrote.

...In the mid-1980s, Jim worked for a consulting and actuarial firm for employee pension plans headed by Joel Boyarsky, national finance chairman for Joe’s unsuccessful 1987 presidential bid. He and Jim did fundraising together for Joe.

As a Biden, Jim “gave me credibility,” said Boyarsky, now 81.

Boyarsky not only taught Jim about pensions but also helped him financially when Jim and Sara, a former Government Printing Office general counsel, bought a $650,000 villa outside Philadelphia.

The sellers gave them a full mortgage. And on the 1997 purchase date, Boyarsky also loaned them as much as $200,000, records show. Boyarsky said he may have made the loan but doesn’t remember it.

The next year, the IRS filed its first lien against Jim’s home to recover about $145,000 for two years of his overdue federal taxes.

The Bidens finished repaying Boyarsky in 2000. They borrowed more than $350,000 that year from Leonard Barrack, a Philadelphia lawyer and former DNC finance chairman. Joe Biden, the Senate Judiciary chairman, had named Barrack, a campaign donor, to his honorary council of advisers. A few months after the Barrack loan, Jim paid off the IRS.

Jim and Sara Biden’s relationship with Barrack soon soured. Barrack’s law firm sued the couple in 2004, alleging that it had hired Sara at Jim Biden’s request to court local government and pension fund clients. Jim Biden would also help generate business “through his family name and his resemblance to his brother, United States Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware,” the complaint said.

Instead, the firm alleged, Jim and Sara had used law firm resources to fuel their consulting company, the Lion Hall Group. The law firm said that it had paid Sara nearly $250,000, plus salary, for the couple to travel to Alaska, Hawaii, France and Italy.

Jim and Sara countersued and the parties reached a settlement in 2004, although its terms are unclear. Barrack did not respond to requests for comment.

The loan from Barrack was satisfied in May 2004, records show. A few months later, the couple borrowed $400,000 from businessman Thomas Knox, a Joe Biden donor and fundraiser who ran unsuccessfully for Philadelphia mayor in 2007. Jim Biden, a donor to Knox’s campaign, finished paying the loan in 2013.

Jim “has been a friend of mine for a while,” Knox said, adding that he may have met Joe through Jim. “There is nothing nefarious here.”

Roy Pinto was among those who discovered that Jim’s business ventures, like Joe’s campaigns, were a family affair.

In 2006, Pinto became vice chair of Corrections USA, an advocacy group for public prison guards. One of its members’ needs, he knew, was better insurance coverage. They worked dangerous jobs in buildings that were often antiquated and overcrowded. Disability insurance was limited to job injuries; if a stress-related condition flared up in retirement, they had to pay out of pocket.

So Pinto solicited bidders to supply comprehensive insurance for his then-8,000 members. A little-known brokerage, Biden & Caveney LLC, expressed interest. The firm had been established when Edward Caveney, who had negotiated insurance deals for dozens of Massachusetts cities and towns, hooked up with Jim Biden. They met through Boston connections, including Larry Rasky, a public relations consultant who had been communications director for both of Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns.

“Ed’s the guy with the feet on the street, (Jim) Biden would provide the name and contacts,” said one insurance executive who worked with Caveney.

Part of the brokerage’s strategy was to parlay the Biden name into access to law enforcement unions and organizations that admired Joe’s support for police. At one event, held in a luxury box at Fenway Park during a Boston Red Sox game, Jim courted representatives of police and firefighter organizations, with the help of James Machado, executive director of the Massachusetts Police Association.

Machado said in an interview that he was friendly with Caveney, who had pitched insurance products to law enforcement before. When Caveney asked for help and mentioned the Biden connection, Machado agreed. He had only met Jim once, but he’d known Joe “way back when,” and his police association had honored Joe.

“We provided an entree into some of the police departments for them to try and go in and pitch that product,” Machado recalled. “I was familiar with the Bidens. I felt comfortable with the Bidens.”

Caveney also hoped that Jim Biden could help him grow business beyond Massachusetts, where he’d been entangled in a controversy. As insurance broker for Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Caveney let what was known as its “stop loss” coverage for employees’ health care lapse-- despite taking almost $300,000 in city money to pay for it.

As a result, the city was exposed to $628,000 in claims. It was a “deep, deep shock,” said its treasurer, David Kiley. In the ensuing furor, Kiley was forced to resign, the mayor decided not to seek reelection and the Massachusetts attorney general launched an investigation into the city’s finances. Caveney reimbursed the $628,000 and half of his fee and was not criminally charged.

Pinto, the Corrections USA vice chair, was unaware of this incident. He was a registered Republican, but he admired Joe Biden’s criminal justice record. In meetings with Corrections USA executives, Jim and his partner offered an attractive package and emphasized their Washington clout. Jim “makes sure he tells you his brother is Joe Biden,” Pinto said. “‘We’re brothers, we’re close.’”

One day in 2007, Pinto recalled, was an all-out Biden blitz. In the morning, he and other Corrections USA executives took Amtrak from Philadelphia to Washington for meetings. When Jim boarded in Delaware, he “brought Joe back to say hello,” Pinto recalled.

On Capitol Hill, Pinto’s group met with the senator, who chaired the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and drugs. Pinto had his photo taken with Joe, and a Biden aide discussed the group’s priorities. That evening, Pinto said, they dined with Hunter Biden, then a lobbyist with Oldaker in Washington.

Biden & Caveney gave a benefits overview at the group’s annual conference.

Then the deal fell apart. Pinto and another association executive said the group balked at Jim’s demand for an unusual arrangement to pay Biden & Caveney’s fees. They had assumed that Corrections USA would pay the fees out of member dues. But Jim insisted that the guards pay all dues-- roughly $750,000 a year, deducted automatically from their paychecks-- to Biden & Caveney. It would keep its fees of about $120,000 and disburse the rest to Corrections USA.

Spokespeople for Jim Biden and the Biden campaign disputed Pinto’s account of the breakup but did not explain why.

After registering as an insurance agent in at least 10 states, Biden & Caveney dissolved in 2011, records show. Dennis DiMarzio, formerly an insurance executive and Boston’s chief operating officer, who helped Biden & Caveney land government contracts, said that Caveney ended the partnership.

“In spite of the name Biden, I don’t think Jimmy was successful in bringing in contracts, which is surprising, because the name carries a lot of weight,” he said.

Both ex-partners stayed in the benefits business. Caveney established an employee benefits firm in Puerto Rico. Approached at his Massachusetts home, Caveney declined comment. Later, he did not return phone messages.

Jim Biden and his wife are principals of BBS Benefits Solutions in Connecticut, which caters to large employers and labor unions.

Its motto: “When families feel secure about their future, they can have peace of mind for today.”

Ed Caveney had problems in Pittsfield before he hooked up with Jim Biden. Some of Jim’s other associates encountered legal trouble after he worked with them-- or while they were discussing potential partnerships.

In August 2007, Jim accompanied Joe to Oxford, Mississippi. The senator was running for president, and his supporters were holding a fundraiser for him at the Oxford University Club.

Among the hosts was plaintiff’s attorney Dickie Scruggs, dubbed “America’s most powerful trial lawyer” in a book by Wilkie, who teaches journalism at the University of Mississippi. Unbeknownst to Joe, Scruggs was then under federal investigation for bribing a local judge. The brother-in-law of former Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott, Scruggs had gained fame-- and nearly a billion dollars-- by brokering a landmark 1998 settlement with four major tobacco companies, which paid more than $200 billion to 46 states to resolve tobacco-related health care claims.

That deal had come after the companies and state attorneys general first sought to wrap the state cases in a single federal settlement requiring the companies to pay more than $360 billion. As the bill reached the Senate, Scruggs retained Jim and Sara Biden’s Lion Hall Group to lobby for its passage.

In a lawsuit deposition, Scruggs vaguely explained Jim and Sara Biden’s role. “I’m not sure they’re lobbyists, but they are a firm that’s headed up by … the person I deal with in the firm, I don’t know who heads it up, is a gentleman named James or Jim Biden, B-I-D-E-N, who’s the brother of Sen. Joseph Biden,” he said. “And he gave us a great deal of advice about what was going on on Capitol Hill during the tobacco legislative effort.”

The bill, which Joe Biden supported, died in the Senate. Scruggs then crafted the settlement with the states, which did not require congressional approval.

Nine years later, when Jim came to Oxford, his old tobacco connections offered a new business opportunity. Among the other fundraiser hosts were Scruggs associates Steve Patterson and Timothy Balducci. Patterson was a former state auditor who resigned in 1996 and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false affidavit to keep from paying county taxes. A former aide to Mississippi Sen. John C. Stennis, Patterson had raised money for Joe Biden’s 1987 presidential bid.

At the time of the fundraiser, Patterson and Balducci, a lawyer, were looking for a Washington presence for a practice they were setting up in New Albany, Mississippi.

They added Sara Biden to the venture, to be called Patterson Balducci & Biden. But it collapsed as a federal bribery investigation caught Balducci on wiretaps arranging a $40,000 bribe for a local judge.

Balducci pleaded guilty and turned over details of the scheme that drew in Patterson, Scruggs and others. All pleaded guilty.

One of Scruggs’ lawyers early in the case was Joey Langston, who would soon plead guilty in another Scruggs-related judicial bribery case. Langston had hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden and solicited the senator’s legislative help.

Despite Langston’s guilty plea and subsequent disbarment, he and Jim Biden eventually became business associates. Both showed up as managers in Earthcare Trina International, a marketing firm affiliated with a Sacramento, California, health care company called Trina Healthcare.

“Biden was going to have a big bite of the apple,” said Shad Ellison, a corporate dealmaker who was asked to help raise money to open medical clinics that would administer Trina’s new diabetes treatment. Trina’s “artificial pancreas treatment” was controversial. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had stopped paying for the procedure in 2009, citing evidence that it doesn’t improve health outcomes. The American Diabetes Association agreed. Nevertheless, Trina’s founder, lawyer G. Ford Gilbert, tried to push a bill through the Alabama Legislature requiring private insurers to cover the treatment. He pleaded guilty in January 2019 to federal bribery charges and was sentenced to six months in prison.

Langston did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Jim Biden did not respond to emailed questions about Trina.

How many times do you think you could say, "but Trump is worse" before you just give up and withdraw from the field? Please click on that thermometer above and help make sure that's not what the 2020 election is about. Let's force Trump into defending himself on real issues that matter to working families. That's how we get rid of him.