Former Obama ethics chief says Hunter Biden’s art sale scheme opens the door for money laundering

Robert Walker

Walter Shaub has served as the director of the Office of Government Ethics under former President Barack Obama and former Donald Trump and now he’s saying Hunter Biden’s new art for sale scam is a “perfect mechanism for funneling bribes”.

That comes after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the White House has made sure that nobody will ever know how much Biden sells his photos for…or to who. Instead, Biden’s art dealer will ensure ethical standards are being upheld.

“They have outsourced government ethics to an art dealer. She mentioned industry standards. It’s an industry that’s notorious for money laundering,” Shaub said. “This is just preposterous and very disappointing.”

Shaub appeared on CNN and said there are no standards in the art industry and that the industry is already known for its ability to launder money.


“They’ve absolutely made it worse for two reasons. One, what they’ve done is ensured that neither you nor I nor anyone watching this show will know who buys the art unless they share it publicly,” Shaub said. “But there’s nothing that 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. Now, maybe we trust Joe Biden not to give preferential treatment because he’s a better human being than Donald Trump, but you don’t run an ethics program on the idea that you hope everybody behaves. If everybody in the world would behave, we don’t even need laws prohibiting murder then.”

Shaub said Biden’s art is selling for far more than other first-time sellers and even many art veterans.

“The thing is, it’s just got the absolute appearance that he’s profiting off of his father’s fame. He’s not selling under a pseudonym. He’s not waiting until his father is out of office. He’s not selling at any price comparable to what other first-time artists are selling,” he said. ” So, the White House should have first made its move to have the president try to talk him out of doing this, and if that failed, they should have gone the opposite direction and asked that the name of buyers be released and pledge to the American people that what they would do is let us know any time one of those buyers got a meeting with an administration official so that the public could judge whether or not they were getting preferential treatment. The problem is, now they’ve set a precedent for the next president. Even if you happen to trust Joe Biden, what if the next president has the character of a Donald Trump? This would be a perfect mechanism for funneling bribes to that president.”

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