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The White House is involved in negotiations to keep purchases of Hunter Biden’s artwork confidential, according to a Thursday report.
Those involved in the negotiations include officials “close” to President Joe Biden, according to a report in The Washington Post. Biden is seeking to sell his artwork — priced between $75,000 and $500,000 — through a New York gallery owned by Georges Bergès. Critics have raised the possibility that the sales could be used as a possible venue for bribing the president, including by foreign governments.
The White House is seeking the confidentiality in an “attempt to avoid ethical issues that could arise as a presidential family member tries to sell a product with a highly subjective value,” according to The Post. The effort is nonetheless drawing detractors, including Walter Shaub, who headed the Office of Government Ethics for four years under President Barack Obama. “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
The Post added, “A person who initially said she was calling on behalf of Bergès — but then said she couldn’t be quoted by name — confirmed that all sales would be kept secret and described any agreement as ‘nothing unusual.'”
The president’s 51-year-old son announced this year that he was turning to art professionally after his former career as an attorney — which included work for a slew of companies that incited scrutiny of the elder Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
The junior Biden considers himself as a “lifelong artist,” according to a profile listed on the Georges Bergès Gallery’s website. The profile adds that his work incorporates “oil, acrylic, ink, and the written word within his work to create a distinctively unique experience that have become signature Biden.”