OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The White House may be facing new scrutiny and allegations of familial influence peddling after first son Hunter Biden’s latest moves.
The presidential son has sold some of his paints for as much as $225,000 to anonymous buyers at an art exhibit in New York City, “despite serious ethics criticism and [an] investigation into his finances,” the Daily Mail reported in a Friday story that also labeled the first son a “con artist.”
“The president’s embattled son attended the gallery opening on Thursday night in Manhattan for his Haiku series, which featured paintings of colorful flower and tree-like designs,” the report noted further. “SoHo gallery owner Geroge Berges, Hunter’s art dealer, told The Daily Beast that the new art pieces range in price from $55,000 to $225,000.”
The outlet noted further:
While Biden appeared to revel in his latest exhibit, it once again raises ethics concerns that the sales are vulnerable to people wishing to influence his father, President Joe Biden.
It also comes amid an ongoing investigation into Hunter’s finances and allegations of illegal business dealing in China and Ukraine that remain in the public eye as Twitter answers why it suppressed the story about his laptop leak.
In an effort to prevent any ethical breaches, White House officials have said they put measures in place to shield information about how much Hunter’s work was selling for and to whom.
But some have argued those measures lack transparency about who may be attempted to curry favor with the Biden administration through the president’s son — allegations the both of them have faced in the past.
“I just think that’s absolutely appalling,” Obama White House ethics chief Walter Shaub told Law & Crime’s “Objections” podcast in August regarding a similar art exhibit featuring the first son’s work last year.
“I’m sorry, I know some folks don’t like hearing any criticism of him. But this royally sucks,” Shaub wrote on Twitter in June 2021. “I’m disgusted. A lot of us worked hard to tee him up to restore ethics to government and believed the promises. This is a real ‘f— you’ to us—and government ethics.”
Shaub ripped the administration over the art arrangement, which would allegedly allow him to sell his art for up to $500,000 to anonymous buyers. Shaub warned that it would open the United States to embarrassment from hostile foreign powers.
“Imagine you’re a Kremlin official looking for a way to embarrass the U.S., and one day you read that the White House negotiated with a private art dealer to keep secret the names of buyers who pay outrageous sums at an upcoming auction for artwork by the president’s lawyer son,” Shaub added on Twitter. “Imagine you’re the White House official who came up with the idea to outsource government ethics management to an art dealer, and you suddenly realize Russian oligarchs like art too.”
Richard Painter, former President George W. Bush’s ethics chief, told Fox News: “It’s going to be very clear with people in the know as to who buys Hunter Biden’s art. The question is, are the American people going to know? The White House should insist on complete transparency.”
In October 2021, the president appeared to snap at a reporter who asked if he was concerned about any ethical issues regarding Hunter’s art.
“Are you concerned about potential corruption with your son’s art sales?” the reporters asked.
“You got to be kidding me,” Biden snapped in response.
REPORTER: “Are you concerned about potential corruption with your son’s art sales?”
JOE BIDEN: "You got to be kidding me" pic.twitter.com/y1hWghSsx5
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 9, 2021
During last year’s art show in Los Angeles at Milk Studios — a Hollywood venue that typically hosts video and photo shoots — Hunter Biden mingled with then-L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who Biden has nominated to become the next U.S. Ambassador to India, and who was a former national co-chair of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government, a watchdog group, said that Hunter being at the event “undermined the White House’s early claims that neither he, nor the White House, would know who bought his art.”
“The silver lining to this dark cloud is now the rest of us also know the universe of who might be interested in buying the paintings — which will make it easier to track if those people are attempting to curry favor with the White House through the President’s son,” she said.
The Washington Post noted at the time: “Not only has Biden previously been accused of trading in on his father’s name, but his latest vocation is in a field where works do not have a tangible fixed value and where concerns have arisen about secretive buyers and undisclosed sums.”
