Now that Papa Joe is back in the White House, Hunter Biden is rich again. Isn’t it amazing how quickly that happened?
Apparently, Hunter is one of the greatest artists that the world has ever seen. Nobody knew this crackhead had it in him.
In an industry ripe for money laundering, the White House has brokered a deal with Hunter’s lawyers that would keep the artist who is the son of President Biden and who has regular dealings with his dad from knowing who purchased his art.
The deal was created by White House staffers before an upcoming art show in New York City this fall. It relies on one art dealer, Georges Berges, to not tell anyone who buys the art valued between $75,000 and $100,000 per piece.
President Obama’s former ethic chief Walter Shaub says that the sale of Hunter’s art while his father is in office, could give the appearance of an easy way to funnel money to the president.
Shaub says that he believes Berges should announce who buys each piece of art from the artist who has no formal training. Shaub says that no one should think that the prices that people will pay for the art will be based on Hunter’s skill.
The Washington Post reported,
“The whole thing is a really bad idea,” said Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices.”
A foreign government could front someone to make a purchase, Painter said, or lobbyists could try to buy the art to win goodwill from the White House. Art purchases are notoriously hard to track, and last year the Treasury Department warned that the secondary market for high-value art, and the anonymity of purchasers, could allow foreigners to circumvent sanctions and gain access to the U.S. economy.
“Because we don’t know who is paying for this art and we don’t know for sure that [Hunter Biden] knows, we have no way of monitoring whether people are buying access to the White House,” said Walter Shaub, who headed the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017. “What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name.”