[guest post by JVW]

File this under “the least unexpected news from the Biden Administration”:

The New York art gallery representing Hunter Biden’s exorbitantly expensive painting collection sold his artwork to a Democratic-donor socialite whom President Biden appointed to a special U.S. commission of international significance.

Despite the assurance of the Biden administration that the president’s son, for ethical reasons, would be left in dark about the identity of his buyers, Hunter later discovered the identities of two of them, sources told Business Insider. One of those two clients received a presidential privilege in the form of a commission placement.

The buyer in question was California investor and philanthropist Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who contributed $13,414 to the Biden campaign and $29,700 to the Democratic National Campaign Committee this year, Insider reported.

Biden announced Hirsh Naftali’s appointment to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in July 2022 — eight months after Hunter’s art debuted at the gallery. The commission is an independent agency of the U.S. government; it’s tasked with reporting on cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe that involve American heritage.

A spot on the commission was highly coveted by Democratic elites, Insider noted. Eric Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s longtime business associate, landed the role in 2015 via appointment by President Obama. An email from that year found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicated that the president’s son might have helped facilitate Schwerin’s nomination, the outlet said.

We were all being gaslighted by the Democrat Establishment when they told us that Hunter Biden, self-taught and a practitioner of his craft for only a few months before “being discovered,” was a serious and legitimate artist, so it should come as no surprise to us that his art sales have become a back-channel into the sort of crony corruption around which the Biden Family seems to center their private enterprises. The article goes on to remind us that one of Biden fils’ masterpieces fetched $875,000. It’s no wonder that Hunter Biden settled his child support claims regarding Joe’s unacknowledged granddaughter by giving her mother paintings of his to sell. They know they are pulling a fast one on us, and they are laughing at us as they do because they know the left-wing art world has their back. Barack Obama’s former head of the Office of Government Ethics has criticized this arrangement from the beginning and predicted exactly what has transpired, with wealthy patrons becoming known to the Biden Administration despite promises to the contrary, and then receiving the benefits of their patronage.

And at the same time this story broke, keen-eyed observers noticed a shift in the White House’s strategy in describing Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s business dealings. Since his days as Vice-President, when Hunter Biden began doing business in Ukraine and China, the official Team Biden line had until now been that Joe Biden doesn’t discuss his son’s business dealings with him, and a pliant media had been happy to take them at their word. But now, as allegations continue to emerge that Joe Biden personally met and almost certainly chatted with Hunter Biden’s business partners and clients, the White House has suddenly updated their pro forma response to a denial that the President has ever been in business with his son. I don’t know about you, but it sure sounds to me like the White House now expects the release of credible evidence that Joe Biden is well-acquainted with his son’s overseas enterprises.

Fortunately for the doddering old fool, lying to the media and the American public is not a criminal offense. But even the worst offenders in the suck-up media culture have to realize that they’ve been played for the chumps that they are, and if they have one iota of pride they might think to register a complaint and maybe even reevaluate their assessment of the forty-sixth President’s character. If Joe Biden changes his mind about running for reelection — or, let’s be very clear about it, has his mind changed for him — then it would seem that the Democrats should want to have all of this sorted out before the end of the summer. Time is running out.

– JVW