When we talk about the shady business dealings of Biden Inc., we mostly hear mentions of The Big Guy and his famous, formerly crack-addled son Hunter. But one name that doesn’t pop up nearly as often is that of the President’s younger brother Jim. That may be starting to change, however. Jim Biden turned up in a secret $140 million construction contract negotiation with the Saudis earlier this year. (Despite having no relevant experience in construction.) More recently, Jim and his wife Sara showed up in James Comer’s investigation when a check for $40,000 (ten percent to The Big Guy) was unearthed. Now even the Associated Press apparently felt compelled to look a little more deeply into Jim’s background. They didn’t have to dig too deeply to uncover a questionable-looking arrangement between Joe’s younger brother and a Florida-based startup healthcare company called Americore Health Services.

When a healthcare startup dreamed of building a network of rural hospitals several years ago, it turned to Jim Biden.

Although he wasn’t a public health consultant or a medical expert, Jim Biden was the brother of Joe Biden, who had recently finished his term as vice president. The firm’s chief executive believed Jim Biden would help provide the enterprise with “serious horsepower.”

But Jim Biden wasn’t the secret weapon that Americore Health Services was counting on. The company imploded in 2019, filing for bankruptcy amid a pile of lawsuits and a federal investigation into fraud allegations.

As with most influence-peddling schemes, it’s difficult to point to a definitive smoking gun at first glance, but this deal still smells bad. Americore was trying to buy up some hospitals in rural Pennsylvania to supposedly create a health network chain. But some of the locals were skeptical of the company’s capabilities and true agenda. Their suspicions turned out to be justified.

That’s when Americore brought in Jim Biden to make their pitch for them. He must have had some sort of impact because the sales wound up going through, though several of the hospitals later collapsed financially. At some point, Jim was paid $200,000 by Americore which he turned around and immediately wired to Joe. The company later accused Jim of defaulting on $600,000 in loans. (This guy certainly seems to receive a lot of huge “loans” for someone who is supposedly so wealthy and successful, doesn’t he?) Biden’s attorneys claimed that all the money he received was in the form of consultancy payments, but he “repaid” $350,000 to them anyway.

The AP seems to be trying to write this off as proof that Jim Biden wasn’t grifting anyone because the Americore effort failed. But what does that have to do with the price of rice in China? Whether the healthcare firm failed or succeeded, Biden still cashed in and walked away mostly unscathed. Also, much like the Saudi construction deal mentioned above, Jim Biden had no experience whatsoever in the healthcare field. What sort of “consulting” was he offering that would justify giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars? And if the rest of the money was a payment for his consulting work, why would he “repay” $350,000 of it?

Jim was selling the Biden name and nothing more, just like his nephew Hunter had been doing. Of course, Hunter occasionally delivered on his end of the deals, such as when his father came through and got an inspector fired at Burisma. There’s no indication yet as to whether Joe Biden was ever directly involved in the Americorps scheme, but it wouldn’t be shocking if that connection turns up later. The fact that Joe received a huge check as soon as Jim was paid suggests there could be more involved. If you read through the rest of the linked report, you’ll find that Jim Biden has run into other problems along the way, such as frequently “forgetting” to pay his taxes, just like his nephew.

James Comer continues to dig into the Biden Inc. money trail and he keeps turning up more and more nuggets. Both Jim and Hunter have been subpoenaed to come in and testify, along with one of Hunter’s business partners. There’s simply too much smoke at this point for there not to be some fire under there somewhere.