President Joe Biden and his relatives are no strangers to making a pretty penny off the family name.
And the most recent money move is so shady it drew the scrutiny of critics from across the political spectrum.
The criticism began when the White House declared that Hunter Biden’s paintings — which recently went viral ahead of his New York gallery exhibition — will be privately sold.
In other words, no one will know who buys the paintings.
Not even Hunter.
Officials at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have purportedly said that the private sale is for ethical reasons.
But critics aren’t buying it…
Walter Shaub, an ethics leader under Barack Obama, says there’s a serious problem at hand.
He called news of the private sale “very disappointing.”
He’s accusing the White House of attempting to cover up who will be buying Hunter’s pieces for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“So instead of disclosing who is paying outrageous sums for Hunter Biden’s artwork so that we could monitor whether the purchasers are gaining access to government, the WH tried to make sure we will never know who they are,” Shaub wrote on Twitter. “That’s very disappointing.”
He goes on to explain that the private sale is controversial because there will be no way of knowing if those purchasing Hunter’s artworks are simply buying access to the White House.
“The idea’s that even Hunter won’t know, but the WH has outsourced government ethics to a private art dealer,” Shaub continued. “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.”
To his point, the buying and selling of fine art has been infamous alone for its shady practices. Just in May, celebrity star Kim Kardashian was linked to a looted piece of artwork in a confusing case of he said, she said, and international loopholes.
Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, echoed the same sentiment as Shaub.
“The whole thing is a really bad idea,” he said to The Washington Post.
“… We don’t know who is paying for this art and we don’t know for sure that [Hunter] knows, we have no way of monitoring whether people are buying access to the White House,” he said.
“What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name,” he continued.
For example, Painter noted, is that foreign entities or lobbyists could be buying these artworks in an effort to leverage access to the Biden White House.
According to New York Post, the paintings are expected to fetch anywhere from $75,000 to $500,000.
The Horn editorial team