Is Anyone Surprised? Wealthy Dem Donors Are Purchasing Hunter Biden’s “Art” and Subsequently Being Granted Favors
[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
At this point one of the reasons that the media doesn’t want to cover the Biden corruption is because in doing so, everyone would just want to know why they weren’t more interested in it, two, four, five, or nine years ago. And the reply “because we just hated Donald Trump that much” won’t hold as much water as they might believe. I’m sure that they would much rather either make a clean break with Biden right now and take their chances with Newsom or Pritzker or even the light-headed hyena who serves alongside of the doddering old fool.
Otherwise, they will wait until the Biden Family has been safely consigned to the ash-heap of history and start to write think pieces pretending that they always found the Biden Family’s grifting to be problematic and that it simply shows how important it is to pay members of Congress higher salaries and tighten up campaign finance laws.
JVW (1ad43e) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:16 pmConservatives keep accusing democrats of being socialists/communists. Looks like capitalism to me. Just following capitalism’s the golden rule. Those with the gold rule! Ever here of clarence thomas?
asset (9b36e1) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:30 pmOnly Trump could have made Joe Biden look like a rational choice.
Nice piece, JVW. And your comment is just as good.
norcal (e5b4c8) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:31 pmWhen this arrangement with Hunter Biden selling his stuff at the gallery was first announced, recall that the deal was that neither he nor the White House was to ever know the identity of the people who purchased his work. From the get-go that struck me as stupid and unworkable: it would be ridiculously easy for me to let the White House or DNC know through a back-channel that I had dropped a cool half mil on the crackhead Caravaggio and expected to be rewarded. And apparently Hunter found out about Ms. Naftali’s purchase because they are allegedly personal friends and he saw his painting hanging in her home. Imagine that.
I felt that instead of keeping the purchasers’ names secret, the names should be public knowledge along with the amount that was paid. Let’s see who thinks that a Hunter Biden masterpiece is worth mid-six figures, either for truly aesthetic reasons or as a shrewd investment, and then let’s cross-check that against people who are made ambassadors or appointed to special commissions or are invited to overnights at the White House, and of course those who have business interests involving the government which benefits from a friendly ally at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Of course my one concern about this is that it doesn’t quite square with my First Amendment beliefs in privacy, but given the obvious potential for corruption I think that something could have been worked out to the satisfaction of all parties and to the public trust.
JVW (1ad43e) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:32 pmConservatives keep accusing democrats of being socialists/communists. Looks like capitalism to me.
Getting rich because of your proximity to government power is far more akin to socialism/communism than it is to capitalism, asset. Yet again your comment is exposed as silly and shallow.
JVW (1ad43e) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:33 pm@5 Not really. Adam smith in the wealth nations said he never went into a room of capitalists where they were not conspiring to fix prices. The capitalist in the movie mcclintock says Mr mcclintock is a man who respects the law I am a man who buys it! Try having capitalism with out government power. That is the history of american capitalism buying politicians to favor them over their competition. Check out war capitalism and the merchants of death. Capitalism has killed far more people then socialism. The deaths caused by socialism are easy to find. Try finding the stats on deaths caused by capitalism.
asset (9b36e1) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:53 pmHunter’s like a corruption magnet.
Paul Montagu (d52d7d) — 7/25/2023 @ 4:57 pmDitto what normal 3 said.
DRJ (ba8685) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:00 pmCompletely unsurprising and completely obnoxious. Crap like this is why no on wanted Biden to be president.
The best case scenario is that Joe isn’t really aware of how corrupt Hunter is. But that seems unlikely and at this point still reflects poorly on Joe.
Time123 (67c93c) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:00 pmNorcal. Dang autocorrect.
DRJ (ba8685) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:00 pmI agree, JVW 4. Transparency is almost always the answer.
DRJ (ba8685) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:02 pmI don’t think that Hunter Biden has any trouble getting women — rich women, attractive women — to give him what he wants all on his own. Including money *for his art*. He does not need to seduce them with blue ribbon appointments from his daddy.
nk (78befd) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:25 pmHe’s even gotten MTG “interested”.
nk (78befd) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:31 pmWhen this arrangement with Hunter Biden selling his stuff at the gallery was first announced, recall that the deal was that neither he nor the White House was to ever know the identity of the people who purchased his work.
There’s probably a SASE taped to the back of each painting.
Kevin M (2d6744) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:37 pmElizabeth Hirsch Naftali is especially thin evidence. She is heavily invested in being a political socialite. She is on a lot of boards and has made a lot of political donations to a lot of people. And right off the top of a Google search:
nk (78befd) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:51 pmYeah, “post hoc” isn’t the best argument.
Kevin M (2d6744) — 7/25/2023 @ 5:58 pmWhy biden? Bernie sanders had to be stopped at all cost. The establishment hates trump who is good for business ;but fears bernie sanders who isn’t! Biden leans left to prevent primary challange from left base of the democrat party. RFK appeals to republicans not democrats ;but still will get protest vote. Green party’s dr. cornel west or other big name lefty worries democrat party if they cannot keep green party off ballot as they did in 2020 allowing biden to barely win az, ga. and wi.
asset (9b36e1) — 7/25/2023 @ 7:06 pmI don’t think that Hunter Biden has any trouble getting women — rich women, attractive women — to give him what he wants all on his own. Including money *for his art*. He does not need to seduce them with blue ribbon appointments from his daddy.
I dunno, nk. I have a feeling that Ms. Naftali can do a lot better than a middle-aged crackhead, but maybe I’m misjudging her. She lives here in Los Angeles, so she can have her pick of handsome and virile young poolboys and maintenance workers, or she could even venture out and find some handsome C-list actor currently out on strike and maybe tending bar to make ends meet. Other than whores, strippers, a grieving widow, and a South African activist and filmmaker, who exactly has Hunter Biden managed to seduce?
So really at the end of the day all Hunter Biden has to offer Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali is access to the President, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s all she really wanted.
But again, the best way to know if this is the erotic power of Robert Hunter Biden or simply out and out chicanery would be to make the names of the purchasers public.
JVW (1ad43e) — 7/25/2023 @ 7:16 pmBut again, the best way to know if this is the erotic power of Robert Hunter Biden or simply out and out chicanery would be to make the names of the purchasers public.
With that, I totally agree.
nk (78befd) — 7/25/2023 @ 7:31 pmThere have been plenty of relatives of the First Families who traded on their relationship or did embarrassing things. Offhand, I recall people like Billy Carter, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, and at least 1 of Bush 41’s sons and Bush 43’s brothers.
I don’t think we can expect perfection from family members, but we should get disclosure if power, money or anything valuable, or political appointments are involved.
DRJ (ba8685) — 7/25/2023 @ 8:02 pmImpeachment sounds like fun!
asset (997fef) — 7/26/2023 @ 1:02 amI don’t think this was a quid pro quo, butpartof a long term political relationship
Also, the White House may have switched to “not in business” some time ago, but the media didn’t notice.
Devon Archer is expected to testify that Hunter Biden arranged for his father to meet hunter’s foreign business partners or associates. or be on the phone with them, about two dozen times.
Joe Biden could still say, and he did say previously, that he hadn’t discussed his son’s business <dealings with his son.
But he did, a little.
Not thoroughly. He apparently never found out that the person he approved to oversee it, to the extent that Hunter would not break the law, had been cut out shortly afterwards. [Tony B.]
Sammy Finkelman (f01dff) — 7/26/2023 @ 6:50 amI’m sure Hunter and his women have exchanged gifts often enough to keep the family Doctor busy
steveg (666f88) — 7/26/2023 @ 8:24 am