Hunter Biden’s gallerist DENIES White House claim that they worked together on ethics guidelines

The Biden administration said the White House worked with a gallery to create ethics guidelines surrounding the sale of Hunter Biden's artwork to prevent the appearance of influence peddling. An interview with gallerist Georges Berges shows that he had no conversations with the White House regarding these guidelines. The first he heard of these ethics guidelines was in press reports. 

"The White House has helped develop a system for Hunter Biden to sell pieces of his art without him," The New York Times reported in July 2021, "or anyone in the administration, knowing who bought them, the latest effort to respond to criticism over how President Biden’s son makes his money."

Yet the White House reported that they had helped to create an ethics agreement with the gallery. The idea was to keep the buyers anonymous—even though that didn't happen. Gallerist Berges said he never worked with the White House, never heard from the Biden administration other than a random call when the president called him to congratulate his daughter on having finished summer camp. He also said he attended the wedding of Hunter Biden's daughter at the White House and said "hi" to the president. That, he said, was it.

Hunter Biden remade himself into an artist and developed a relationship with the Georges Berges Gallery in New York City. He was introduced to Berges in California by a Democrat operative, who was a mutual acquaintance. After corresponding for a bit, Berges took Hunter on. His paintings were going for hundreds of thousands of dollars—a rare thing for an artist who had never professionally shown his work and had no sales prior to his first showing.

The relationship—and the sales—caught media attention and the White House was made to answer for just how the only surviving son of the president was able to transform himself from an international businessman sitting on boards of energy companies and making shady deals into a celebrated artist at a New York gallery.

Berges had 15 works from the younger Biden up for sale and made sales to 10 buyers, 3 of whom were known to the artist, despite that being absolutely against standard gallery practice. When asked about the sales, and asked if the buyers were known to Hunter, the White House responded that he did not know who the buyers were.

Further, the White House said that they had helped develop a set of ethics that would be followed for Hunter Biden's works to avoid the appearance of bribery or influence peddling. Berges was quoted in The New York Times as saying that the ethics guidelines would work "just fine." Those ethics guidelines were allegedly to prevent Hunter from knowing the identity of his buyers and to prevent "suspicious" sales, which Berges was supposed to reject.

But Berges now says that there were no ethics guidelines, and that he became aware of the supposed existence of these guidelines when they were reported in media. 

In documents of Berges' interview with the House Oversight Committee, reviewed by The Post Millennial, it was revealed that Biden made his first art sale only after Joe Biden was elected president, in December 2020. It was revealed that Berges took on Hunter's work and was obligated, through their agreement, that the names of all buyers would be disclosed to Hunter. 

This is not standard practice as galleries prefer to maintain their own relationships with collectors to prevent themselves from being cut out of deals.

Further, the documents show that the relationship between Biden and Berges changed after September 2021 when the buyers' names were specifically not to be disclosed. The reports of the creation of the ethics guidelines came in July 2021. Despite these alleged guidelines, Hunter was familiar with 3 of the persons who purchased his work.

These buyers included Elizabeth Naftali, who purchased two of Biden's works and then was named to the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad in July 2022 by President Joe Biden. 

Berges was asked by House Oversight about the changed Hunter requested in September 2021 that would prevent him from contractually knowing the names of his buyers. Berges told House Oversight that Hunter requested the changes, and that he did not know who told Hunter to request that change.

"So when you're seeing the press that the White House is putting in certain safeguards regarding an ethics agreement," he was asked, "but you've had no conversations with the White House, I mean, did you ever say to Hunter Biden 'Hey where is this coming from? This is in the press, saying the White House is involved in this ethics agreement. They're not even involved in the agreement at all.'"

"I might have," Berges replied, "I probably did, yeah." He further stated that he did not remember what Hunter said back to him, but for Berges part, he said "I remember—I do remember being surprised."

He was surprised, he said, "because [he] hadn't had any communication with the White House about an agreement." Further, he was surprised by the reports that the White House was working with Hunter Biden as well as the gallerist on the creation of an ethics agreement because he'd never spoken to the White House about it. The only report Berges saw about the ethics guidelines were in the press, he told House Oversight.

"Do you have any reason to believe the press reports are incorrect?" Berges was asked.

"Well," Berges said, "they were incorrect." He said he "didn't really see what the White House said," just "what the press said."