President Biden’s brother, James, will sit for a deposition before the House’s impeachment investigators, and it will take place before his nephew, Hunter Biden, does the same. 

The chairman of the Oversight Committee, Congressman James Comer, tells the Sun that his committee’s lawyers and James Biden’s attorneys have reached an agreement for James Biden to sit for a private deposition just days before his nephew will testify. Mr. Comer says it will happen on or around February 21. 

Hunter Biden is due to testify on February 28. 

“I think we’ve got a good series of people coming in,” he said of the depositions. “There are a couple more people that we want to bring in, so we’ve been sending letters, requesting them to come in. If they don’t then we’ll subpoena them.” In recent weeks, Mr. Comer has deposed several Hunter Biden associates, including his millionaire lawyer friend Kevin Morris, his former lobbyist partner Eric Schwerin, his ex-business partner and former close friend, Devon Archer, and business associates Rob Walker and Mervyn Yan. Hunter Biden’s art dealer, Georges Berges, has also submitted to a deposition. 

Both the first son and the president’s brother were subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee in November, though both failed to appear for their scheduled deposition dates in December. 

The president’s brother, who has spent decades making money off the president’s name and brand, has come under special scrutiny in recent months after the Oversight Committee disclosed the existence of two “loan repayments” sent to the president in 2017 and 2018 by James Biden’s wife, Sara. Just days before Sara Biden sent the then-former vice president a wire transfer of $40,000, her husband had received money from the first son who had been paid by a business partner in Communist China. Republicans have pointed to this as an example of the president indirectly receiving money from Hunter’s and James’ overseas influence trading.

One of the most recent developments in the Biden family investigation also centers on James Biden’s lucrative career as a powerbroker at the nation’s capital thanks to his brother’s place among Washington’s elite. James Biden is now being accused of taking clients’ money and promising results that did not transpire.

In an interview with the Oversight Committee in December, a Chapter 11 trustee for a struggling healthcare company, Americore, Carol Fox, accused the president’s brother of using his  family’s name to enrich himself without ever providing services. James Biden had promised to help the company obtain funding deals in the Middle East — a promise that won James Biden a $600,000 loan from Americore. 

A tobacco industry lawyer also told the Washington Post that James Biden was hired as a lobbyist for the industry while the now-president was serving in the Senate. In 1998, James Biden was paid $100,000 by a trial lawyer from Mississippi who wanted a pro-tobacco industry bill to get through the Senate. The lawyer, Richard Scruggs, told the Washington Post that he “probably wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t the senator’s brother.”

The White House has consistently denied that the president was ever involved in any policy outcomes as a result of the money his brother or his son made, insisting instead that the president had loaned money to his brother and was simply being repaid. Mr. Comer previously told the Sun in an interview that his committee has found no evidence of such loan documents being signed, should they exist at all.