Hunter joins Biden for official visit to Ireland

President Biden was accompanied by his embattled son Hunter on Tuesday as he departed Washington for a four-day trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland, meant to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and underscore U.S. commitment to economic development in the region.

The president boarded Air Force One alongside his son and sister Valerie Biden Owens as the group set off for Belfast, where they will be greeted by U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak later Tuesday.

Before departing, Mr. Biden told reporters that he was being joined by “just two of my family members who hadn’t been there before.”

Hunter Biden’s trip with the president is likely to draw scrutiny from Republican lawmakers who have zeroed in on the Biden family’s long trail of overseas business dealings.

Mr. Biden said his top priority for this week’s trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland is to “keep the peace” and “make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor agreement stay in place.”

The U.S.-backed pact forged peace between Northern Ireland’s pro-independence Catholic movement and the Protestant British loyalists who wanted to remain part of the U.K.

The president is expected to hold bilateral talks with Mr. Sunak on Wednesday before delivering remarks underscoring the U.S. commitment to peace in the region and support economic development in Northern Ireland.

He will then travel to Dublin to hold separate meetings on Thursday with Irish President Michael Higgins and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.

Beyond diplomacy, the trip is also an opportunity for the president to nurture his Irish roots, an elemental part of his political image.

He is expected to visit the birthplace of his great-grandfather James Finnegan, who moved to the U.S. the after the Irish potato famine.

“The president is very much looking forward to that trip and to celebrating the deep historic ties that our two countries and our two people continue to share,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

Hunter Biden’s trip with his father comes lawmakers are investigating the Biden family’s web of overseas moneymaking schemes, which have fueled suspicions of influence peddling. The family reaped huge profits from ventures frequently linked to countries where Mr. Biden spearheaded Obama administration policy, including China and Ukraine.

In 2013, Hunter Biden accompanied then-Vice President Biden on an official visit to China — a trip which later drew scrutiny as lawmakers probed the family’s lucrative deals with Chinese Communist Party-backed firms.

Last month, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee uncovered bank records revealing suspicious payments totaling roughly $1 million to members of the Biden family after Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese energy company.

Mr. Walker received the wire transfer from State Energy HK Ltd., a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party-backed CEFC China Energy Co., just months after President Biden ended his term as vice president in 2017.

Bank records obtained by the committee reveal that Mr. Walker made payments to President Biden’s brother James Biden, son Hunter Biden and daughter-in-law Hallie Biden.

The reason for the payments, doled out just two months after Mr. Biden ended his term as vice president, remains a mystery.

Hunter Biden’s legal team said the House oversight memo exposing the suspicious payments was baseless.

The White House also brushed off the memo.

Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, has made the Biden family’s financial transactions a centerpiece of his investigatory agenda. Last month, he announced that the committee had gained access to a trove of suspicious activity reports involving Biden family bank accounts after months of back-and-forth with the Treasury Department.

Suspicious activity reports give banks a mechanism to flag transactions for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

“We are going to continue to use bank documents and suspicious activity reports to follow the money trail to determine the extent of the Biden family’s business schemes, if Joe Biden is compromised by these deals and if there is a national security threat,” Mr. Comer said.