POLITICO – Prosecutors said a business associate of Jim Biden conspired to defraud Medicare alongside an alleged leader of the Colombo crime family in a brief filed Friday in federal court in New Jersey.
The government’s accusation is likely to intensify scrutiny of the ties between President Joe Biden’s brother and the associate, Mississippi businessman Keaton Langston.
The Justice Department named Langston as a co-conspirator in the ongoing fraud case just three weeks after congressional investigators grilled Jim Biden about his relationship with the Mississippi businessman.
In the course of a previous prosecution, the Justice Department identified a defendant in the fraud case, Florida businessman Thomas Farese, as a high-ranking member of the Colombo crime family, according to court filings.
Last month, POLITICO reported that Jim Biden had accompanied Langston, the son of a longtime friend, at a May 2017 meeting at which they pitched the services of Langston’s medical lab testing business to a hospital chain.
The hospital chain, Americore, has become a focus of the impeachment inquiry led by House Republicans that is probing potential links between the president and his relatives’ business dealings.
A spokesperson for Jim Biden, Brian McDonough, did not respond to a request for comment. Though the government has identified Langston as a co-conspirator, he has not been named as a defendant in the case.
He did not respond to requests for comment made to a phone number believed to belong to him.
Attorney Casey Langston Lott, a cousin of Langston’s who has represented Langston at times, said he was not in a position to comment and did not respond to a follow-up request for help contacting Langston directly.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Joe Biden has said he never discussed his relatives’ business dealings …
