Former WH Ethics Chief Blasts Biden Admin Over Hunter’s Art: ‘They Have Outsourced Government Ethics to an Art Dealer’
Walter Shaub, who served as director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics under Barack Obama and Donald Trump, hit the Biden administration for new reporting about Hunter Biden’s artwork.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that White House officials “helped craft an agreement” for President Joe Biden’s son to sell his artwork where buyers “will be kept confidential from even the artist himself.”
Shaub has been highly critical of serious ethical issues in the Trump administration, and more recently has called out Biden for not imposing tighter ethical standards. He recently lambasted the Biden administration for hiring children of the president’s top aides.
He hit the Biden administration again following the Post report:
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.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 8, 2021
Shaub himself told the Post, “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.”
In a lengthy Twitter thread on government ethics on Thursday night, Shaub expressed frustration that there has been no sweeping ethics reform he believes is sorely needed after the Trump era. In the meantime, he argued, the bar needs to be higher than where Trump set it.
The president’s son is selling art at extravagant prices based on his ties to the president. We have a White House that effectively blessed this profiting on a father’s public service by hinting that it didn’t seek disclosure of buyers’ names for fear of driving down prices./14 pic.twitter.com/RnDr3MqPIB
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 8, 2021
Even if there’s no preferential treatment this time, it’s a precedent a future president can rely on.
Then, there are the lobbyists and shadow lobbyists. I’m willing to be proven wrong, but it looks like Biden has fewer than Trump had but more than Obama had at this point. /16
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 8, 2021
But, again, staffing an administration with Washington insiders is a double-edged sword. You get an administration ready to go from the start, which is a good thing in a pandemic. But you also get rooms full of folks who see nothing wrong with the way things were before Trump./28
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 8, 2021
Shaub continued Friday to say the White House is just asking for people’s “blind trust”:
The last administration told us no one in the White House would learn who stays at hotels run by a presidential relative. Telling us no one in the White House will learn who buys a relative’s art seems like asking us for blind trust again.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 9, 2021
A problem with bad ethical decisions is they’re precedents for future administrations. Even if you trust one POTUS can you trust the next? Imagine Don Jr. sells a painting to a Saudi prince for $500,000, and the next day the government begins approving new weapons sales to KSA.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 9, 2021
Now that Don Jr. has cleared millions of dollars on art and KSA has lots of new weapons to use on civilians in Yemen in this hypothetical, are you so sure you want to be defending the White House keeping art sales at extravagant prices a secret from us?
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 9, 2021
Maybe all government ethics systems should be managed by private art dealers and their anonymous buyers. All secrets too. I mean, if you can’t blindly trust an art dealer and an unknown number of anonymous buyers to keep secrets and keep the government ethical, who can you trust?
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 9, 2021
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was questioned during Friday’s briefing about the Post report, and said, “A system has been established that allows Hunter Biden to work in his profession within reasonable safeguards.”
Shaub joined CNN after that briefing Friday and said, “They have outsourced government ethics to an art dealer.”
He responded directly to Psaki by saying, “She mentioned industry standards. It’s an industry that’s notorious for money laundering. There’s no standards in that industry, and the idea that they’re going to flag any overly-priced offers, well, this is art that hasn’t even been juried into a community art sale. How are they going to decide what’s unreasonable when they’ve already priced it in the range of $75,000 to $500,000 for a first outing? This is just preposterous and very disappointing.”
Shaub told Alisyn Camerota and Victor Blackwell the White House has ensured that “there’s nothing that we can do to monitor to make sure that Hunter Biden or anyone in the White House doesn’t find out that the dealer keeps his or her promise, that the buyers don’t call the white house, ask for a meeting and say, ‘Hey, I just bought the president’s son’s art for $500,000.'”
He argued that even if people trust Biden because he’s not Trump, the next president could have “the character of a Donald Trump” and this “would be a perfect mechanism for funneling bribes to that president.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
