Former President Obama’s ethics chief blasted the White House’s ethics plan around the sale of Hunter Biden’s artwork.
The White House announced its ethics plan surrounding the sale of the presidential progeny’s pieces on Thursday, saying the younger Biden would not be privy to who is buying his artwork to try to avoid ethical pitfalls, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Walter Shaub, Obama’s former ethics chief, eviscerated the White House in a Twitter thread, saying the administration is trying to “make sure we will never know” who the buyers are.
“So instead of disclosing who is paying outrageous sums for Hunter Biden’s artwork so that we could monitor whether the purchasers are gaining access to government, the WH tried to make sure we will never know who they are,” Shaub wrote while linking to the Post’s report. “That’s very disappointing.”
“The idea’s that even Hunter won’t know, but the WH has outsourced government ethics to a private art dealer,” Shaub continued. “We’re supposed to trust a merchant in an industry that’s fertile ground for money laundering, as well as unknown buyers who could tell Hunter or WH officials? No thanks.”
Shaub expanded on his Twitter thread in a Thursday statement to Fox News, saying in an email that the deal is “the opposite of government ethics” and what the White House did was, in effect, getting “the art dealer to promise not to give us the means to monitor whether the buyers are getting preferential access to government” by keeping buyers anonymous.