Obama Ethics Chief: Hunter Biden Art Sale “Preposterous and Very Disappointing”

Ethics experts, mainstream media outlets and Republicans are calling out the Biden White House for failing to address the ethical concerns surrounding Hunter Biden’s art sale. Walter Shaub, Barack Obama’s ethics chief, slammed the plan to keep buyers’ identities hidden from the Biden family and the public as “preposterous and very disappointing.”

Rolling Stone: “They have outsourced government ethics to an art dealer,” Shaub said of the plan to have Bergès keep the sales anonymous and make the major decisions around who buys the paintings. “[Psaki] mentioned industry standards,” Shaub said. “It’s an industry that’s notorious for money laundering. There’s no standards in that industry.”

Shaub continued, saying that there is no way to guarantee the buyers will remain anonymous. “There’s nothing 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.’”

CNN aired a segment that claimed the Biden name is the only reason Hunter’s pieces could fetch up to $500,000 each. An art critic said the prices were “out of scale with normal pricing” for the “generic” paintings.

Shaub and others have called for the private art gallery and the White House to publicly disclose potential buyers before the sale is final so that the public and ethics experts can review the transactions.

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The art sale is a bad idea, full stop. But at least transparency would let bids be scrutinized in real time, preferably before a sale is final. Instead the White House is proposing opacity, even as its press aides brag that President Biden “has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history.”

Bottom Line: Hunter’s art sale is just the latest example of Biden family members profiting off their relationship with the president. Despite Jen Psaki’s claim that the Biden administration operates under the “highest ethical standards of any administration in American history,” Hunter’s art sale is anything but ethical and a national security concern.