President Biden’s younger brother, James, will play a central role in the Republicans’ push to impeach the commander-in-chief next year, and while Hunter Biden, who is now facing multiple felony charges, has taken up much of the spotlight, the president’s brother may be a richer vein to mine. 

James Biden has made a decades-long career trading on his brother’s name and selling the aura of access to his brother when Mr. Biden was a powerful senator and later vice president. James Biden was subpoenaed, along with his nephew Hunter, by the House Oversight Committee on November 8 as the chairman, Congressman James Comer, investigates what he calls “organized crime” by the members of the Biden family, who’ve long used the Biden name to make millions of dollars overseas. 

The panel asked James Biden to appear for a closed-door deposition — the same kind that Hunter Biden has refused to attend — on the morning of December 6, but the president’s brother did not appear. A source close to the Oversight Committee says that lawyers for James Biden are in talks with committee staff about a future appearance. 

The president’s brother has come under special scrutiny in recent weeks 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 his nephew, Hunter, who had been paid by a business partner in Communist China. 

The committee’s most recent development 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 on Monday, a Chapter 11 trustee for a struggling healthcare company, Americore, Carol Fox, accused the president’s brother of trading on the family name to enrich himself without ever providing services. Mr. Biden had promised to help the company obtain funding deals in the Middle East — a promise that won Mr. Biden a $600,000 loan from Americore. 

Yet Ms. Fox told committee members that he did not deliver. In a lawsuit, she said that he made “representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.” When Americore wired $200,000 of the loan money to Mr. Biden in 2018, he then turned around and sent the same amount to his brother, who was then a private citizen. 

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. 

Mr. Biden’s lucrative career began during his brother’s long tenure in the Senate. In 1998, Mr. 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.”

Mr. Biden, who was serving as a senator, would eventually support the legislation for which Mr. Scruggs was lobbying. Mr. Scruggs was later investigated for bribery by the FBI, who wiretapped James Biden as part of its probe. Mr. Biden has not been accused of wrongdoing.

It’s difficult to understate the benefits of being a powerful politician’s brother, as a recent ProPublica analysis demonstrates. James Biden, who never graduated from college, began receiving large loans from banks even though he did not qualify or have the necessary assets to use as collateral. Most of these loans, ProPublica reports, came from donors to Mr. Biden’s campaign and powerful attorneys and financiers in Delaware who had long been supporters of the president.