Jim Biden negotiated deal with Saudis ‘because of relationship’ to Joe

President Biden’s brother was hired to engage in secret negotiations with the Saudi government on behalf of a US construction company because of his relationship with the then vice president, legal documents claim.

Jim Biden was selected because Saudi Arabia ‘would not dare stiff the brother of the Vice-President who would be instrumental to the deal,’  bombshell affidavits obtained by DailyMail.com allege.

Joe’s younger brother Jim, 73, was at the center of a $140million settlement negotiation between Hill International and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012.

According to the documents, Jim told a former senior US Treasury official working as a private investigator that he was hired to negotiate with the Saudis ‘because of his position and relationship’ to VP Joe Biden – who led delegations to Saudi Arabia at the time.

A February 2011 contract obtained by DailyMail.com shows Hill International hired three law firms, R.L. Walker & Co., Lankford & Reed, and Poblete Tamargo, to help rake back $140m  from the Saudis

In an affidavit the former Treasury official, Thomas Sullivan, described his sit-down interview with Jim Biden about being hired to negotiate with the Saudis.

Sullivan claimed the President’s brother told him: ‘Of course, the [Biden] name didn’t hurt’, and Jim’s wife Sara, who was present, allegedly said that Joe and his brother ‘told each other everything.’

‘[Biden] stated that he was often sent to meetings to represent Hill because ‘of course, the name didn’t hurt,’ and he was the former Vice-President’s brother, or words to that effect. He repeated this statement at least twice during the interview.

‘I asked specifically if he had attended a meeting with the Saudi Ministry of Trade in mid-February 2012 to receive the final payment for the work Hill had performed. He answered that, to the best of his memory, he had been at such a meeting, and that the reason he had attended was “because of his position and relationship” with his brother.’

In a May 2022 affidavit, Lankford & Reed partner V. Thomas Lankford (pictured) described the deal 

Jim Biden’s role in the Saudi negotiation emerged after a spat between the US construction firm Hill and their erstwhile lawyers over a payout from the Saudis.

The Saudi government owed Hill $140million for their work building desalination plants in the Middle Eastern kingdom dating back to the 1980s.

A February 2011 contract obtained by DailyMail.com shows Hill hired three law firms, R.L. Walker & Co., Lankford & Reed, and Poblete Tamargo, to help rake back the money.

For years their negotiations were part of the ‘Special Claims Process’, a US government program to settle the kingdom’s unpaid debts to American firms.

But Lankford & Reed claims Hill also hired Jim around 2011 to fix a back-door settlement for $100million, and failed to pay the lawyers their 40% cut after years of working on the case.

In a May 2022 affidavit, Lankford & Reed partner V. Thomas Lankford described the alleged double-cross.

‘After many delays, a meeting was finally scheduled for mid-February, 2012, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,’ he wrote. ‘The Professional Firms were excluded from this meeting. Hill, acting through [its CEO, Irvin] Richter, sent Jim Biden – the then sitting Vice President’s brother.

‘Richter confided that he selected Biden because KSA [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] would not dare stiff the brother of the Vice-President who would be instrumental to the deal.

Thomas Sullivan, a former director in the enforcement division at the Treasury Department, interviewed Jim at his home in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, on July 16 2017, according to Sullivan’s affidavit

Sullivan added that he had a brief exchange with Jim’s attorney wife Sara, who told him ‘he doesn’t like us talking to people’

The Republican-led congress has promised an exhaustive investigation into influence peddling by members of Biden’s family, including son Hunter 

The lawyer claimed that Jim later ‘admitted that KSA and Hill had secretly agreed to settle the claim through the award of future contracts.

‘Mr. Biden further confirmed that Richter used Biden as a settlement intermediary in order to capitalize on the influence and orchestration of the settlement by the then Vice-President,’ Lankford wrote.

The lawyers hired an investigator to question Jim and his wife about the alleged back-door deal, and they allegedly obtained some shocking admissions from the President’s brother.

Sullivan interviewed Jim at his home in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, on July 16, 2017, according to Sullivan’s affidavit.

‘I asked Mr. Biden to describe his position with Hill International,’ the former Treasury official wrote. ‘He said that he had been hired to do “business development” work for them and that Saudi Arabia was a country that Hill had him assigned to assist with.

‘James stated that he was told that the final payment would be made in both cash and “a very large amount” of new future contract work.’

The affidavit does not specify who ‘he’ refers to, but a source briefed on the case told DailyMail.com that it was Joe Biden.

‘I didn’t ask for a further explanation since I was looking at two large men in dark suits, in a big black sedan parked on a side street looking directly into their house down the walkway I had just exited,’ Sullivan wrote. ‘I thought they were some type of security, probably Secret Service.’

Joe Biden’s family were not entitled to Secret Service protection at the time, as he had ended his term as Vice President.

‘Sara and I walked to my car. She told me that her husband and his brother were very close, and that they told each other everything. I reached inside to give her a card, and just as I did, a blue sedan, with a single male driving, pulled quickly into their driveway. She said ‘See what I mean?’

Sullivan told DailyMail.com that he was not authorized to comment further.

‘He stated that he was often sent to meetings to represent Hill because ‘of course, the name didn’t hurt,’ and he was the former Vice-President’s brother, or words to that effect

Lankford described the alleged double-cross in the May 2022 affidavit

Lankford and the other attorneys involved did not respond to requests for comment. 

Jim Biden and his wife were also intimately involved in Hunter Biden’s multi-million-dollar deal with Chinese government-linked oil giant CEFC – a deal which is currently under investigation by federal prosecutors.

Joe Biden has denied knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings, but the revealing comments by Jim and his wife in the 2021 affidavit could cast doubt on those claims.

When reached, Sara Biden declined to comment and Jim Biden did not respond to comment requests.

A source close to the case told DailyMail.com that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has a copy of the affidavits and other case files, and is investigating them as part of his committee’s probe into the Biden family’s business dealings.

Hill’s CEO Irvin Richter ‘confided that he selected Biden because KSA [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] would not dare stiff the brother of the Vice-President who would be instrumental to the deal’

The Republican-led congress has promised an exhaustive investigation into influence-peddling by members of Biden’s family, including Hunter and Jim. 

Jim has previously been scrutinized for his links to Hill International.

The company’s housing subsidiary, HillStone International, hired Jim as an executive vice president in late 2010, and Jim took a minority ownership stake in the company.

Six months later it won a $1.5billion deal to build at least 100,000 affordable homes in Iraq, in part thanks to the Obama State Department. Joe Biden was Obama’s point man on Iraq at the time.

Richter told the New York Post in 2012 that Jim’s familial connection played no part in landing the deal.

However, Richter’s son David Richter, who later became President of Hill International, told a private meeting of investors in 2015 that it helped to have ‘the brother of the vice president as a partner’, according to a Fox News report the following year.

Despite Jim’s lack of experience in the construction industry, Hill CEO Irv Richter called him a ‘good salesman’, while their website trumpeted his ’40 years of experience dealing with principals in business, political, legal and financial circles across the nation and internationally.’

The deal later fell apart when the Iraqi government failed to provide financing.

In 2020, David denied having any ties to Jim.

‘I have no ties to the Bidens. Jim Biden worked at a Hill subsidiary for a couple of years. That subsidiary did not report to me. I was not in favor of investing in that company,’ he told the New Jersey Globe.

‘After several years of failure, it was shut down at my insistence, and I’ve never seen or heard from Jim Biden since.’