Daily Fact-Check: Did a subpoena of bank records prove that Joe Biden benefited from his family’s influence peddling scheme? Nope.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a committee member, said it proved Joe Biden was guilty of “money laundering.” And Rep. Lauren Boebert, also a committee member, said it was “the textbook definition of corruption.”

But as has been the case so often in the House investigation of the finances of Joe Biden’s family members, the claims have outpaced the evidence so far.

The $200,000 payment from James Biden on March 1, 2018, was labeled “loan repayment” in the memo field on the check, and Democrats on the oversight committee say bank records also show a payment from Joe Biden to his brother six weeks prior, which they say is consistent with a no-interest, short-term loan to James Biden.

James Biden’s $200,000 “loan repayment” to his brother came on the same day he received a $200,000 check from Americore Health, a for-profit hospital chain. A publicly available bankruptcy court complaint filed in July 2022 shows that the financially struggling Americore alleges that it loaned James Biden a total of $600,000 “based upon 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.”

Comer argues that the $200,000 check from James Biden to Joe Biden shows Joe Biden was in on the “influence peddling scheme,” but that link hasn’t been established. An attorney for James Biden says Joe Biden was not involved in any of James Biden’s business ventures, and that Biden — who was not in office or running for office at the time — simply gave his brother a short-term loan that was paid back.

FactCheck.org has obtained some of the bank records in question, and we’ll sort through the available evidence to date.

On Sept. 28, Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, issued three subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records. On Oct. 20, Comer publicly released a copy of a $200,000 personal check from James Biden and his wife, Sara, to Joe Biden.

As we said, the check, dated March 1, 2018, and marked “loan repayment,” came on the same day that James Biden received a check for $200,000 from Americore.

The payment from Americore is not new information. The July 2022 complaint in bankruptcy court shows Americore wire transferred $400,000 to James Biden’s account on Jan. 12, 2018, and another $200,000 on March 1, 2018. The documentation prepared by Americore references the sums as a “loan.”

James Biden secured the loans “based upon 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,” the document states.

That investment never materialized, though the complaint said James Biden did help Americore “procure an ill-advised bridge loan from a hedge fund that had a deleterious impact on the financial affairs” of the company and “ultimately forced [it] into bankruptcy.” According to the complaint, James Biden “never repaid the Loans to Americore Health, including during the time that Debtors were strapped for cash.”

In a settlement reached on Sept. 23, 2022, James Biden agreed to return $350,000.

That had all been publicly reported at the time. What was new was the revelation by the oversight committee that Joe Biden got a $200,000 check from James Biden on the same day James got $200,000 from Americore.

“It’s a loan repayment from when President Biden loaned his brother money,” White House spokesman Ian Sams posted on X. “When he was out of office in 2018, no less. It’s right there on the check!”

Democrats on the committee said Republicans ignored that bank records also showed a payment in the same amount from Joe Biden to James Biden six weeks prior to that, consistent with the White House’s claim of a short-term loan.

“These records actually show that President Biden was the one who stepped in to help family members when they needed support, including by providing short term loans to his brother,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee.

“These bank records show that in 2017 and 2018, while President Biden was not in office, he provided two short-term loans to his brother, James, who repaid each loan within two months,” Raskin said in a press release on Oct. 20.

FactCheck.org obtained an Excel spreadsheet of wire transfer records and check images that are consistent with Raskin’s account.

Those records show two wire transfers from Joe Biden to a joint account for James and Sara Biden, one for $40,000 on July 28, 2017, and one for $200,000 on Jan. 12, 2018. The wires came from an “Attorney Trust Account” maintained by Joe Biden’s attorneys at the firm “MONZACK MERSKY MCLAUGHLIN BROWDER.”

A check image from Sept. 3, 2017, shows a $40,000 payment from a joint account for James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden (the check is signed by Sara Biden and is labeled “loan repayment” on the memo line). The payment was deposited into the same account from which the $40,000 wire payment was made 38 days prior.

An image of another check — the one highlighted by Comer — shows a $200,000 payment from a joint account for James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden on March 1, 2018. That’s 48 days after Joe Biden wired James Biden a similar amount. It, too, is noted as “loan repayment” in the memo line.

In an emailed statement to the Wall Street Journal, James Biden’s attorney, Paul Fishman, wrote, “The Committee has the bank documents that show both the loan Jim received from his brother in January 2018 and the repayment by check six weeks later. At no time did Jim involve his brother in any of his business relationships.”

Comer made several appearances on conservative media touting the check as a breakthrough in the investigation into Joe Biden.