(breitbart) – Hunter Biden, who is under investigation for tax fraud, has reportedly sold a total of about 12 paintings to anonymous buyers during his father’s term as president of the United States.
While the average yearly wage of an American artist is $73,013, Hunter has reportedly raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars as a novice painter.
Previous reports indicated Hunter sold five paintings for $375,000 each in 2021. But according to a new estimate by a gallerist, Hunter’s has now sold about 12 paintings for less than his asking price of $500,000, Washington Post reported.
It is unclear how much money Hunter has made from his art, but estimates show he has earned at least five times more than the average American artist — all while being a novice.
Adam Thompson, a prominent artist from Miami, told Breitbart News he believes Hunter’s artwork is “not bad” for a novice, “but it’s not $500,000 good.”
Hunter’s artwork would likely only be worth only “$4,000-$5,000” if he was not the president’s son, Thompson added. “It’s nowhere near as good as George W. Bush’s art.”
Hunter’s sold paintings to anonymous buyers have raised red flags. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) told Breitbart News in 2022 he is “95 percent sure” the buyers of Hunter’s art are Chinese buyers, potentially implicating President Joe Biden.
“To ask for up to $500,000 is just a blatant payoff,” Thompson explained. “The real problem lies in the people who are buying it at the outrageous prices they’re selling for.”
The art market is known for corruption. A Senate subcommittee report detailed in 2020 how the art market serves as a vehicle for money laundering:
A large number of art sales happen through intermediaries referred to as “art advisors” who can represent both purchasers and sellers. In a typical transaction, a purchaser may not ask who owns the piece of art they are purchasing; the seller may not ask for whom it is being purchased or the origin of the money. And in general an art advisor would be reluctant to reveal the identity of their client for fear of being cut out of the deal and losing the business.Hunter’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, who has a history of doing business in China, has been called to testify before the House Oversight Committee. The committee seeks transparency on Hunter’s art sales. Bergès has not yet agreed to testify and has hired legal counsel.
In an interview with the Post, Bergès defended Hunter’s art and claimed Hunter could “become one of the most consequential artists in this century.”
“His is a story of perseverance; Hunter’s story reflects what I believe is the beauty of humanity, judged not by the fall, but by having the strength to rise up, by having the character required to change and the courage to do it,” he said.
“Hunter Biden’s art reflects all of that and more. His art gives us hope; it reminds us that tomorrow brings a new day, a new beginning, a new possibility,” he said.
In 2021, Hunter and the White House defended his art scheme as legitimate a venture.
“Fuck ’em… Look, man,” Hunter Biden said on the Nota Bene Podcast. “The value of an artist’s work is, umm, is not necessarily determined by the price. But the price is completely subjective. … It has nothing to do with anything other than, you know, the moment. Like, umm, you know,” Hunter tried to explain. “Taping a banana to the wall. … But, but, but, it means something, and it meant something to someone.”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.
Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from Hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing even to have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/06/report-hunter-sells-about-dozen-paintings-under-500000-each/
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