How bad is this?

The Biden administration has decided to conceal all paper trails to Hunter Biden's suspiciously high-priced "art" sales in an amazing claim to "ethics." 

According to the Washington Post:

White House officials have helped craft an agreement under which purchases of Hunter Biden's artwork — which could be listed at prices as high as $500,000 — will be kept confidential from even the artist himself, 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.

Under an arrangement negotiated in recent months, a New York gallery owner is planning to set prices for the art and will withhold all records, including potential bidders and final buyers. The owner, Georges Bergès, has also agreed to reject any offer that he deems suspicious or that comes in over the asking price, according to people familiar with the agreement.

Memo to the Post: That's "artist," not artist.  Unless, of course, you'd like to modify it as "con" artist.

The whole thing is an amazingly bad load effort to fool the public into thinking Hunter Biden's sudden interest in art is not a sophisticated money-laundering operation premised on the lack of transparency that exists in the world of art sales.  Bad guys the world over are known to launder their ill gotten cash through purchases of art, and then resell the art, making a clean paper trail for their nefarious doings and pocketing the cash.  To say political bribes, from gamey foreign actors, organized crime, or Washington lobbyists, can't be done through the same medium is nonsense.

The New York Post, in a pointed editorial, points out the problem with this "ethical" approach:

Yet the White House is pretending it can all be kept clean by having the dealer keep the buyers anonymous along with guarantees to reject any suspicious offers above the asking price.

But Hunter says he expects to pull up to half a million bucks apiece, which makes the asking price plenty suspicious. Even art aficionado Alex Acevedo, who says he's "floored" by Biden's self-taught skill, sees the proper price for this level of work as $25,000 to $100,000. But the most likely buyers won't be paying for the art.

And nothing can stop the buyers from quietly letting their purchase be known — just display it at a DC cocktail party.

That's not the only way a lobbyist can make his purchase known.  How many photos are out there of Hunter and Joe and some skeezy foreign player meeting in official and unofficial settings?  All a lobbyist has to do is tell Joe and Hunter that he bought the work so he can get the political favor he wants.  Only the public will be kept in the dark with these new "ethics" rules.

Those who profit are going to know.  Yet the Biden administration thinks the public is going to buy this nonsense, convinced that the public is stupid.

Biden Junior, recall, turned up as an "artist" about a year ago, claiming he had this great vocation to create art after a career of political wheeling-dealing.  He claimed he was entirely self-taught, with zero art education, zero art skills, conveniently doing abstract rather than representational painting, which is a good way to conceal a lack of talent and discipline.  Yet somehow he would have us think his paintings are worth half a million bucks straight out the gate, literally "masterpieces," and he's this art sensation, despite the fact that other, more skilled, talented, and educated artists typically take in about $1,000 to $2,000 for their first paintings.  The Daily Wire quotes art experts as saying he does hotel wall–level art at best.

All of this followed a previous career as a bagman for his powerful politician dad (known as "the big guy" in his emails found on his abandoned laptop computer, one who'd take a 10% or perhaps 50% cut, depending on the email).  During the Obama/Biden administration, young Hunter the art prodigy followed his dad around on his travels wherever he went, effectively with his black bag extended, collecting millions of dollars from gamy suspect foreign entities from places like Ukraine, Romania, and China just by amazing coincidence.  It was all his business prowess, you see, that he raked in so much cash, the Bidenites claimed.

Yet with all this supposed business talent, on top of all this artistic talent, when Joe was out of power, Hunter descended into the world of junkies as a crack-addicted loser wastrel son of a powerful pol out of power. As recently as three years ago, Hunter used his ill gotten cash to make Chateau Marmont, a ritzy movie-star hotel, his flophouse, with "an ant trail" of drug-dealers and sleazy hangers-on marching in and out, until he got thrown out for kicking out walls and stinking up the joint.  Apparently, he got thrown out of a lot of them, as I wrote here.

Now we're supposed to believe he's this art prodigy who comes along only once in a century, with paintings sold for $500,000 a pop.

But it's all ethical, you see, with the public now to be kept in the dark on the art sales records, and Hunter shielded from the long arm of the law in some future administration by the fact that he "didn't know" who bought his paintings.  Even the fact that the art dealer, a man with significant Chinese connections, is setting a ceiling on the price, rather than a floor, as normal art sales do, as part of this "ethics" deal is suspect.  That whole detail suggests that art prodigy Hunter is putting out a price list of what to get in exchange for particular political favors.  Don't be surprised if it is.

All this as White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki declares the Biden administration the "most ethical" in history.

They've pegged the public for stupid on this and seem to be sure the money will keep rolling in and out.

Image: Acaben via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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