President Joe Biden’s family has begun returning to headlines recently after a House Oversight Committee memo alleged that Hunter Biden and at least two other relatives received just over $1 million from a Chinese company through indirect payments.
It is the latest in a chronicle of stories surrounding the president’s family, largely associated (as it is again) here with son Hunter and his overseas business dealings.
As the family faced renewed scrutiny, claims on social media have appeared alleging even stranger goings-on behind the scenes.
The Claim
Multiple social media posts, published between March 4 to 9, 2023, included a video that claimed to show Joe Biden‘s daughter, Ashley Biden, alleging that the president has a twin brother.
The person in the video said: “My grandfather Joe Biden does have a twin and that twin is currently pretending to be Joe Biden in the White House.
“So unfortunately, my grandfather Joe Biden passed away about four years ago but, you know, he had built up this really long political career and my family still wanted to have a bit of power in the U.S. government so we just replaced Joe with his twin brother, Beau.”
The Facts
The claim that Joe Biden has a twin has fit into the conversation around the Biden family and their alleged profiting from Hunter Biden‘s relationship with overseas businesses.
The president has continued to deny knowledge of his son’s business dealings, which has led some to suggest, in jest, that he has a twin acting in his place.
The video which was shared on Truth Social this week plays more directly to this claim, with “Ashley Biden” allegedly saying that the president has a twin brother who is working in the White House.
However, not only is there no evidence for this outlandish claim, but the person in the video is not Ashley Biden. For a start, Ashley Biden is the president’s daughter, not his granddaughter.
The same video was shared in 2022, that time also inaccurately attached to Naomi Biden, who is one of the president’s grandchildren.
An earlier debunk by PolitiFact found that the video came from a TikTok account, by the name of Kass Theaz, clearly labeled “SATIRE” (although the video no longer appears to be online).
Although the video does not name Naomi or any other of Biden’s grandchildren, it was attached to claims that it was Naomi and, as has been clumsily attempted now, Ashley.
The president does have three siblings, Jim, Frank, and Valerie, none of whom are his twin. Beau was the name of his son who died in 2015 from brain cancer.
Interest in the Biden clan is likely to continue following the House Oversight Committee memo, allegedly revealing payments made to members of the family.
His daughter-in-law, Hallie Biden, is reported to have received $25,000 from a Chinese company through a conduit.
Following a recent subpoena for bank records, the committee majority staff claimed that a family associate, John Robinson Walker, received a $3 million wire from Chinese company State Energy HK Limited in March 2017.
Over the following three months, bank records show a series of disbursements were made from Walker’s account to Biden family members, including payments totaling $35,000 for Hallie Biden, the memo said.
Newsweek has contacted the White House via email for comment.
The Ruling
False.
Joe Biden does not have a twin brother. He is the oldest of four siblings, the other three being Jim, Frank, and Valerie.
Ashley Biden is the president’s daughter, not his granddaughter.
She does not feature in the video attached to the twin claim. The video features TikToker Kass Theaz and was intended as satire.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team
The post Fact Check: Does Joe Biden Have a Twin Brother? appeared first on Newsweek.
