First Lady Jill Biden is displaying Hunter Biden’s “art” in her taxpayer funded White House office amid a scheme to sell the works to “anonymous” investors for up to $500,000, the New York Times revealed Friday.
It is unknown if the piece of art is displayed to promote Hunter’s validity as a novice artist, or if the display is meant to promote his art to those who may meet with Jill Biden in her office.
Hunter’s art will be on display at two art shows New York City and Los Angeles this coming fall. President Joe Biden and Jill Biden will not attend the promotional shows, the Times reported.
But Hunter’s art dealer Georges Bergès confirmed to the Times that Hunter will be in attendance at the shows to schmooze potential investors.
“Obviously, artists have to attend their own opening — both openings will be ‘by invitation only’ and limited to friends and family,” Bergès told the Times. “There will be no discussion of pricing and sales — that will be handled by the gallery at other times.”
Many have been critical of the White House’s permission to allow Hunter to effectively trade off his family’s name.
“There is some value in celebrity, but at the end of the day, the quality of the art tends to dictate how the market relates to it,” said Edward Dolman, the chief executive of Phillips auction house.
“We have a situation in which the White House is essentially giving a private gallerist that no one has ever heard of a political position,” art history professor at the University of Michigan Joan Kee also told the Times.
Even the Times stated that “the sale” of Hunter’s art “has opened a debate about whether the president’s son is trying to make money off his last name, and whether his art could be a window of influence into the Biden administration.”
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden responded to critics of his “artwork” July 29 by suggesting it’s a “pretty courageous thing to do.”
“Fuck em… Look man,” Hunter Biden added on the Nota Bene Podcast, “I never said my art was going to cost what it was going to cost, or how much it would be priced at. I would be amazed, you know, if my art was sold, for you know, for, umm, for ten dollars.”
“I’m most famous artist in MAGA world, at least,” Hunter facetiously continued before suggesting President Joe Biden thinks “everything” Hunter does “should be in National Gallery” of Art.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on July 22 labeled Hunter’s “anonymous” art selling scheme as “reasonable.”
Breitbart News senior contributor and Profiles in Corruption author Peter Schweizer, however, told Breitbart News the “anonymous” proposal is an utterly “absurd” solution to the grift.
“The only way to address these issues is with greater transparency–not less,” explained Schweizer. “Their proposed solution is greater secrecy, not transparency. And they are essentially saying ‘Trust Us.’ Joe and Hunter Biden’s track record on such matters gives us no reason to trust them.”
The story of Hunter’s artwork business gets shadier when taking a closer look into the history of Georges Bergès’s connections to Communist China.
“My plan is to be the lead guy in China; the lead collector and art dealer discovering and nurturing talent from that region,” Bergès stated in 2015. “I plan to find and discover and bring to the rest of the world those I consider China’s next generation of modern artists.”
Bergès’s connections to Communist China are concerning due to Hunter’s past work as his father served as vice president — making deals with Chinese officials and cashing in tens of thousands of dollars per month serving on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oligarch-owned oil and gas company, despite having no experience in the energy sector.
Joe Biden later bragged about threatening to stop aid from Ukraine unless officials fired the prosecutor conducting a corruption investigation into Burisma.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø
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