Guns, Lies, And Audiotape: An Investigation Into Biden Family Ties To Healthcare Fraud

Politico's magazine ran a story over the weekend which delves into President Biden family's ties to a northern Mississippi legal cabal which has ripped off Medicare and other healthcare programs for many millions of dollars.  The story is waaaaay too long and convoluted to reproduce in full here, but is worth a read if you get a spare 15 minutes.  Here is a taste:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/08/biden-mississippi-scandal-00189993

Guns, lies and audiotape: How Biden’s family ties could lead to another pardon
For decades, a scandal-plagued Mississippi family has cozied up to the president. How will the relationship end?

By Ben Schreckinger - December 8, 2024

BOONEVILLE, MISSISSIPPI — In this sleepy county seat dotted with vacant brick storefronts, the immense estate that dominates the southern approach into town stands as a monument to legal savvy and political pull.

The property’s endless brick walls and winding footpaths represent the tangible fruits of decades of courtroom wrangling and backroom deal-making that made Joey Langston Booneville’s leading citizen — and a longtime political ally of the Biden family.

Now, the Langston family’s relationship with President Joe Biden could be the difference between freedom and incarceration for one of its members.

The son, brother and grandson of attorneys, Langston built on his late father Joe Ray Langston’s small-town legal practice to become the richest, best-connected man in town.

His ascent began in the 1990s, when he fell in with a loose-knit fraternity of larger-than-life Mississippi lawyers who cozied up to judges and legislators — including, most prominently, Joe Biden — while making a fortune in complex, politically sensitive lawsuits.

He forged a partnership with legendary tort lawyer Dickie Scruggs, a brother-in-law of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, positioned himself as Biden’s man in Mississippi, and became one of several members of his Southern legal crew to pursue business deals with Biden’s brother, Jim.

He then came back from a sensational case-rigging scandal and saw his eldest son, 39-year-old Keaton, establish another generation of Langstons in Booneville with a local pharmacy venture and a gated property of his own on the other side of town.

For his part, Keaton Langston made millions in health care and, working with his father, continued the tradition of doing business with Jim Biden.

Along the way, according to interviews and documents, the younger Langston gifted a gun to a congressman, bought himself a gold Rolex once owned by the gangster Whitey Bulger, partied at the Naval Observatory and took to describing himself as Joe Biden’s “godson.”

So, in February, when a delegation from Congress slipped into this part of Mississippi hill country, it was no wonder that its members headed straight to the family’s law office.

By springtime, the signs of trouble afoot in Booneville became obvious. A local TV station broadcast a news segment about Justice Department accusations that Keaton Langston had conspired with an alleged mafia boss to rip off government health care programs.

Then in May, Keaton Langston pleaded guilty in a federal court in New Jersey to $50 million worth of fraud, some of which occurred at a hospital company Jim Biden worked for.

The plea seemed to mark a bleak coda to the saga of the Biden family’s long run with their allies from Mississippi.

But Keaton Langston’s case is not over yet, and an audio recording reviewed by POLITICO indicates there is more to the story.

On the recording, Keaton Langston vents about his plea negotiations and the pressures of feeling caught between his father, the Justice Department, and the president’s brother.

He says he “covered” for his father, but only after receiving some sort of assurance from a person he described as “the senator in Alabama.”

He also says he was not truthful with federal investigators about Jim Biden and describes his father’s view of his situation as: “We have a guarantee that Keaton gets a pardon.”

Representatives for the president and Jim Biden did not respond to requests for comment.

A lawyer for Joey Langston, meanwhile, said he never urged his son to mislead the government or discussed pardons with any member of the Biden administration.

Though the legal team representing Keaton in his criminal case declined to comment, his father’s lawyer said, “both Keaton and Joey deny having ever been guaranteed a pardon by anyone.”

But with the president’s long run in public life drawing to a close, pardons will soon be front and center.

And as Keaton Langston awaits his sentencing, it remains to be seen whether the Biden brothers’ long history with a crew of canny Southerners will enable this small-town legal dynasty to clinch the outcome of one last case.

<snip>

On one particularly memorable occasion, Joe, Jim, Hunter and Beau Biden came down to the college town of Oxford for a football game at Ole Miss in the late ’90s. There, Joey Langston brought them to the legendary tailgate that takes place each gameday on ten magnolia-lined acres at the heart of campus, an area known as “the Grove.”

Not long after, Wilkie — who had covered Biden’s county council career as a young reporter in Wilmington — recalled running into the Delaware senator at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Biden, he said, described the tailgate as “the best f***ing party I’ve ever been to in my life.”

Around this time, Langston took Joe and Jim Biden to another vacation house on Pickwick Lake — a long-and-winding manmade reservoir at the intersection of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee — where he hosted a dinner for the Bidens and a group of friends.

Joey Langston’s proximity to the Biden family bolstered his standing — and aroused jealousies — in Mississippi. It also gave him pull in Washington.

In addition to his tobacco litigation, he began working with a lawyer who had won a $187 million judgment against the Cuban government for downing two aircraft piloted by members of an activist exile group. Because the defendant was a sovereign nation, the victims’ families needed help from Congress to collect.

According to Wilkie’s book, Joey Langston successfully enlisted Joe Biden’s help. The necessary language made it into a bill championed by the Delaware senator, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, and Langston earned millions.

A year later, when George W. Bush nominated Mississippi state Supreme Court Justice Mike Mills for a federal judgeship, Joey Langston offered to help smooth the way for his confirmation.

Langston, along with another trial lawyer, Paul Minor, brought Mills to the Capitol and arranged a brief meeting with Biden in the hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mills’ nomination sailed through.

Mills, who still serves as a district judge in the Northern District of Mississippi, expressed surprise and embarrassment when asked about the encounter arranged by Langston and Minor, who went on to be convicted in a separate corruption scandal involving loan guarantees for judges.

“Joey and Paul were known as people having a lot of contact with the president,” explained Mills, referring to Biden by his current office. Mills said he was glad for the chance for face time with a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, but distanced himself from the lawyers who arranged it.

“I regret that I had any dealings with them whatsoever,” Mills said. (Minor, who was released from prison in 2013 after six years of incarceration, said in an interview that he did not recall the episode.)

Wilkie’s book describes how access to the Bidens became an object of competition among the Mississippians, as the lawyers jockeyed to get closer than their rivals to the family.

Around the time that Joe Biden regained the gavel of the Foreign Relations Committee, in 2007, Jim Biden began making plans to launch an international law and lobbying firm with Patterson and Tim Balducci, a young lawyer who worked for Langston.......

Go to the Politico hyperlink, above, for the full story.