Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has the facts. Again.
In a recent letter from the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee (meaning Raskin) to panel chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), Raskin refuted recent claims from Comer and others trying to use a large check to the now president from a brother of his as supposedly potential evidence of corruption. The context is the impeachment inquiry targeting the president that Republicans have been pushing… though they were significantly derailed in their focus by the recent drama around who’d serve as House Speaker, which the majority party in the House (meaning Republicans) only managed to resolve after some three weeks of legislative paralysis.
The money that went to Biden, who was not in office at the time of the transaction, was directly documented as a loan repayment — and, Raskin says, there’s also documentation of the original loan. No matter the reaches from Republicans, like trying to loop the now president in with his family members’ separate business activities by virtue of him also exchanging money with this brother, Raskin explains the evidence is clear.
And yet, Comer obscured it.
“Just yesterday, you told Fox Business viewers, “there is no document that shows there was a loan,”” Raskin wrote on October 26. “Yet the bank records provided to the Committee clearly show that President Biden had $200,000 wired to his brother on January 12, 2018. Despite this clear evidence that James Biden received a loan from his brother on January 12, 2018, and paid him back 48 days later with a check for the same amount marked “loan repayment,” you continue to misrepresent the facts.”
Republicans had run far and wide with details on the transfer from James Biden to Joe Biden, marketing the associated documentation as finally some proof of a direct payment to the now president… without emphasizing what the payment was for. “Joe Biden received a direct payment of $200,000 for influence peddling using his last name. Joe Biden is a criminal and now we have the proof,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently claimed. There just isn’t any clear evidence connecting the money in question to anything other than the personal loan!
