Biden family ties pose questions

"While Beau was here, he was the person considered responsible for bringing the SimmonsCooper work to our firm," said Connor Bifferato. He said the relationship started because "Beau knew Jeff" Cooper. Beau's interest in expanding his firm's portfolio coincided with SimmonsCooper's concern about declining prospects in their home base of Madison County, Ill., which had become such a center for filing tort claims that one business group dubbed it a few years ago "America's No. 1 judicial hellhole."

Bifferato added that he did not think Beau Biden's ability to secure the SimmonsCooper account had anything to do with his being a senator's son. He also said the SimmonsCooper work did not generate any "measurable income" until after Beau left the firm at the end of 2006.

Cooper said his friendship with Beau Biden was one reason he chose Bifferato, Gentilotti & Biden to help file asbestos cases in Delaware. But another was that it was "one of the best firms in the state."

He added that Beau Biden has had no interest in the firm's cases since he moved to the attorney general's office, but "his old firm continues to do a great job on SimmonsCooper cases."

In 2006, the Leahy-Specter legislation reached the Senate floor, and Joe Biden again rose to speak against it.

"The real problem is that there are a lot of people out there suffering from the effects of asbestos. There are not a lot of companies out there with the money to pay all of these claims. There is the concern that some of the very companies we have to go to, to recover from, may very well declare bankruptcy. So I understand the motivation. It is a decent, honorable motivation," he told his colleagues on Feb. 14, 2006.

"But the bottom line is, what we are asking an awful lot of people to do is to give up a right in tort that has existed in common law for hundreds and hundreds of years. . . . The victims are not in on this bill."

When the measure came up for a vote that evening, Biden was among 41 senators who voted against it -- meaning it fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage. It never came up for another vote.

A few months after that bit of Senate drama, the complex deal involving the senator's brother and son moved forward. His brother James -- a now 59-year-old Pennsylvania businessman -- and son Hunter -- 38 and a Yale Law School graduate working as a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington -- sought to acquire a group of hedge funds known as Paradigm. To get the initial capital for the deal, they went to Cooper, who described himself in a brief e-mail exchange with The Times as an admirer of the senator and a longtime "friend of the Biden family." He noted that his wife and Hunter Biden's wife had gone to high school together.