Justin Bullock, FISM News
Concerns regarding Hunter Biden’s budding art career were addressed during a White House press conference on Friday. The son of President Joe Biden and has received extensive ethics criticisms following his ambiguous time with a Ukrainian energy company, and his foray into selling his art adds another ethics issue. The White House has outlined a special agreement that they say allows Hunter to legally and ethically sell his artwork without running afoul of constitutional and legal ethics requirements for the president and his family.
According to the special agreement, a private art gallery will set prices for Hunter’s artwork and will handle all bidding and sales. In addition, the art gallery will not share any information about buyers or prospective buyers with Hunter or anyone in the Biden administration or family. Finally, the art gallery will exercise extensive scrutiny of prospective buyers making sure not to accept any abnormal offers, including offers that are substantially greater than the asking price. Hunter’s artwork will also be exhibited in New York and Los Angeles through private viewings.
These measures generally serve as an acceptable guard against the Biden family engaging in commercial contracts with foreign entities, however it is widely believed that the measures fall short of preventing Hunter’s enrichment based on the use of his father’s name. Indeed, many art experts have been surprised by the initial pricing of Hunter’s work given his lack of an established reputation as painter, and have thus attributed the significant prices to the fact that Hunter shares a last name with the sitting president.
Democrats have pointed to the actions and activities of former President Trump and his family saying they were more egregious than Hunter’s artistic ambitions. In response Republicans have pointed to President Biden’s executive order at the beginning of his term which strengthened ethics requirements for government officials, particularly in the White House, and asserted that the president is engaging in hypocrisy.
Ultimately the role and rights of families of elected American officials has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. There are no clear rules as the Constitution is intentionally ambiguous and any specific rule-making has traditionally been left to the sitting president. However, with an increasingly globalized world, the national security risks faced by presidents and their families continue to grow and it may become necessary in coming years to formalize a robust and clear system of regulating what is and is not both legally and ethically acceptable for members of the presidents family.