The latest grift from Hunter Biden is the planned sales of his artwork, anticipated to fetch some steep prices for an amateur painter. It is reported that the White House is involved in drafting a document that says the purchasers of the artwork will remain anonymous to both the White House and to Hunter. This leaves the gallery owner, Georges Bergès, as the gatekeeper.

Berges has his own baggage. He owns an art gallery in Soho and regularly features Chinese artists. It has been reported that he has ambitions of opening art galleries in Beijing and Shanghai. The art dealer has a criminal record.

In 2016, Berges was accused of defrauding investor Ingrid Arneberg by $500,000. Berges countersued Arneberg and the two settled in 2018.

Years earlier in 1998, the Post reported Berges was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and making “terrorist threats,” which were later dismissed.

He received 36 months probation in served 90 days in jail, according to the Santa Cruz Superior Court.

Last month I wrote about Hunter’s upcoming art sale at Berges’ gallery. At the time, Walter Shaub, the former Office of Government Ethics director in the Obama administration, was the only ethics expert speaking out against such an obvious grift. Shaub called the sales shameful with a “gritty feeling to it.” At least someone was being honest, right? The Washington Post reports today that Georges Bergès will set the prices for the work. He will shield the names of the bidders and purchasers. Bergès will also reject any offer he deems suspicious. This is the deal the White House is alleged to have struck with Berges and Hunter via the document. Do we have any faith that Berges will show good judgement in what is and isn’t “suspicious”?

The deal is now being criticized by another blast from the past in the world of ethics – Richard Painter. He admits that the predicted prices of Hunter’s art pieces are crazy high at $75,000 to $500,000.

“The whole thing is a really bad idea,” said Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices.”

A foreign government could front someone to make a purchase, Painter said, or lobbyists could try to buy the art to win goodwill from the White House. Art purchases are notoriously hard to track, and last year the Treasury Department warned that the secondary market for high-value art, and the anonymity of purchasers, could allow foreigners to circumvent sanctions and gain access to the U.S. economy.

Painter’s opinion aligns with Shaub’s. People will buy Hunter’s artwork because of his last name. Does anyone think that 51-year-old amateur artist Hunter Biden would be getting his own art gallery showing if his last name wasn’t Biden?

“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,” said Walter Shaub, who headed the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017. “What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name.”

This is as it has always been in Hunter’s professional life. He gets business deals and jobs because he trades on the family name. This is how Biden, Inc. operates. Joe’s been in political office since Hunter was a toddler and the family cashes in. The Big Guy gets his 10%, according to Hunter’s emails on the laptop we are not supposed to talk about. If this was any Republican administration, especially the last one, the Washington media would have its hair on fire. But, it’s a Democrat administration and Joe Biden must be protected. That includes turning a blind eye and feigning indifference to Hunter’s shady deals.

With the reporting that a document was drawn up about the anonymity of the purchasers in the White House, Joe Biden can no longer claim he knows nothing about his son’s business dealings. Not that Joe really cares about public scrutiny. While he was in the White House the last time, as Obama’s vice-president, he was warned more than once that his family was crossing ethical lines to cash in. Nothing changed. Biden, Inc. went about its merry way all the way to the bank.

Hunter Biden, through his attorney Chris Clark, did not respond to an interview request for this article. When asked about the artwork — including terms of sale and potential ethics concerns — Clark referred questions to the White House.

Hey, Joe Biden has established the most ethical administration in American history, why do you question that?

Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary, suggested that the buyers’ confidentiality would ensure the process is ethical. “The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, and his family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example,” Bates said.

Bergès, the gallery owner, did not respond to several requests for comment over the past week. But the arrangement was described by two officials familiar with it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

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.”

Others rightly argue that transparency, not secrecy, keeps transactions above board. Remember that the next time a member of Team Biden talks about how transparent the administration is. It is thought that the art gallery showing is Hunter’s way of re-emerging on the Washington scene after his relatively low profile so far. He went on a book tour but I don’t think that went as well as he hoped. He is still under a federal tax investigation. If Republicans take back the House, and hopefully the Senate, they should open investigations to Joe’s involvement with Hunter’s business dealings by using that laptop we aren’t supposed to talk about. Hunter is entitled to make a living as an adult supporting his many children but it’s not ok for his father to have helped him get some sweet deals while either a senator or vice-president.