A billionaire entrepreneur from China lavished 3-carat diamond jewelry on then-Vice President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, and the two accepted a four-figure offer to put up their Delaware home as collateral for a loan from him, a report said Saturday.
Jill Biden’s reaction when she learned that husband Joe Biden had proposed an offer from Du Bois Jewelers for their home to buy the jewelry in a deal described in the New York Post and attributed to sources who said they were close to the episode said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
The list of gifts run by Fortune Magazine alleges “more money than God” was given to the top family members of the then-vice president and his family. Such gifts are potentially problematic since top advisers to the vice president at the time of the alleged transaction in 2009 were trying to navigate a tough financial world but had been unable to reach agreement on how to avoid running up additional federal debt in an already broke country.
The Biden home, on more than an acre of well-tended grounds, is fully outfitted with a gazebo, a formal dining room and, of course, a stunning custom-made swimming pool. The pool is one of the more than $1 million worth of gifts that Fortune reports include a five-carat diamond ring on a 5-carat sapphire set in platinum, and an $8 million vintage Rolls Royce Phantom VIII donated to the Biden children and donated to the family when Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton became the first couple of the United States. The report, from August, says a $30 million offer to put up the Delaware home was also made for the home.
The sources told the New York Post that the two women had reluctantly agreed to the appraisal and offer because the jewelry is their source of income.
The Citizen Review Board, the Delaware attorney general and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the merger proposal.
Biden spokesman Zach Hamm previously told the Delaware News Journal that the vice president had not received any of the gifts and “would not accept gifts of this nature.”