Royalties from a pair of books he published years earlier: $2,933. Interest from one bank account: $15,000 or less. Gifts to declare: none.
President Biden’s annual financial disclosure report, released Monday by the Office of Government Ethics, contained such mundane income sources for a president who, at 80, spent nearly his entire adult life in public office.
The required disclosures come as Republican lawmakers in the House step up attacks on Biden over allegations of financial wrongdoing. They have accused the president of capitalizing on his position to enrich his family but have yet to provide any conclusive evidence.
The report mostly lists ranges for the values of the president’s assets, income and liabilities. Biden listed 23 separate financial accounts under the category of “other assets and income.” Most generated little or no income, according to the disclosure.
Income from books Biden wrote years earlier were also listed. “Promises to Keep,” about Biden’s life in politics, and “Promise Me, Dad,” about the death of his older son, Beau, generated a total of $2,933, according to the filing.
First lady Jill Biden reported receiving a salary from her teaching job at Northern Virginia Community College, though a dollar figure was not disclosed. She also reported receiving nominal income from books she published, “Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops,” (between $201 and $1,000); “Where the Light Enters” (“None, or less than $201 “) and the children’s book “JOEY — The story of Joe Biden” (between $5,001 and $15,000).
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has said that members of Biden’s family have taken millions of dollars from foreign nationals, saying his committee was aiming to determine whether Biden had been compromised.
So far, Comer has struggled to link the president to the alleged wrongdoing. “You have got some circumstantial evidence,” Fox News host Steve Doocy told Comer last week, but added “there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”
Biden’s financial disclosures do not show evidence of foreign income sources. He has said the GOP claims that foreign nationals have routed his family money are false.
Biden reported having one bank account with a cash total between $250,001 and $500,000 and another with a cash total between $500,001 and $1,000,000.
The banking scare earlier this year prompted some depositors at faltering banks to fear whether their large deposits would be safe. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits only up to $250,000.
While some depositors opted to move some of their cash into other bank accounts to keep the totals below $250,000, Biden did not appear to take such a step. The president has several other cash accounts with amounts below the FDIC limit.
Biden’s liabilities include a mortgage on his personal home in an amount between $250,001 and $500,000. The interest rate for the mortgage, which Biden incurred from TD Bank in 2013, is 3.375 percent.
Average mortgage rates surged past 7 percent last fall as the Federal Reserve sought to tamp down inflation. The president also took out a home-equity loan last year of between $15,001 and $50,000, with a variable interest rate and a 10-year term.
Vice President Harris’s financial disclosure report, by comparison, was more complex. It included a salary from Georgetown University, though no amount was listed, more than a dozen bank accounts, bonds and investments, ranging in value between $1,001 and $100,000.
Harris and first gentleman Doug Emhoff also reported purchasing more than 50 mutual and index funds, and selling dozens of others. Harris reported more than $80,000 of income from royalties from the books she wrote: “The Truths We Hold,” a memoir, and “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” a children’s book.