When Hunter Biden shared that he was going to try and sell his ‘art’ for between $70,000 and $500,000, even the Democrats raised eyebrows of concern. According to former President Barack Obama’s ethics chief Walter Schaub, this is a walking scandal. You know if Obama’s ethics chief is asking questions, then things are bad. Yet again, Hunter Biden is profiting off his father’s public service and being the son of a president.
Instead of dealing with the transparency of a proper plan, the White House announced that it will not let the public know who is buying Hunter’s art. They said not even Hunter Biden will know who bought the art. It’s hard to believe that anyone would buy his expensive art for nothing but a name and no way to leverage that. Shaub said that the White House will not disclose who pays outrageous prices for Hunter’s art so that people could see whether the purchasers are gaining access to government.
“The idea’s that even Hunter won’t know, but the WH has outsourced government ethics to a private art dealer. We’re supposed to trust a merchant in an industry that’s fertile ground for money laundering, as well as unknown buyers who could tell Hunter or WH officials? No thanks,” Shaub said.
President Biden’s 51-year-old son will have his 15 paintings up at the Georges Berges’ Gallery in Soho, with a private viewing for collectors in Los Angeles in September. Prices range from $75,000 for works on paper to $500,000 for the larger canvases. The gallery owner Georges Berges said he’d “agreed” to reject any offer for Biden’s work that he deems suspicious or that comes in over the asking price.
Critics have argued that buying the art at high prices from an immediate member of the first family is a way to get cozy with the commander-in-chief. It is “the opposite of government ethics” and gets in the way of transparency between the president’s son and his father’s public service. One critic questioned the asking prices for Biden’s art, describing his work as “somewhere between a screensaver and if you just Googled ‘midcentury abstraction’ and mashed up whatever came up.”
Shaub was also critical of President Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who announced a new book “Growing Up Biden” that will come out on April 12 of next year. The book is expected to cover everything from her childhood to her relationship with her brother throughout life. Shaub said that the president has not publicly told his relatives to “stop capitalizing on his name” and beg his family not to go through with their actions.
“On one level, I feel empathy for the president having all these relatives he can’t directly control capitalizing on his name — whether it’s his brother, his son, or his sister — but, on the other hand, he isn’t exactly out there publicly saying he wishes they’d stop, and that makes this a little bit his problem too,” Shaub said.
Protecting the identities of anonymous buyers creates a host of problems and Hunter Biden has gotten away with way too much already. He’s starting all over again with this series of paintings that are nothing but a swipe of paint and downright corruption. Imagine if Donald Trump Jr. did this. There’d be a media storm.
