The White House said in July 2021 that a “system” had been “established” to ensure the identities of those who bought Hunter Biden’s artwork would remain anonymous for ethical reasons.
However, the first son’s art dealer testified that a new agreement to stop the disclosure of Biden’s art buyers was not set up for several months following that statement and said the first son knew the identities of approximately 70% of those buyers.
George Bergès, the art dealer for Biden, took part in a closed-door, transcribed interview before both the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees earlier this month as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
Georges Berges attends SNOW JOB “defying gravity” Exhibition at Root NYC on Oct. 30, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
House investigators, during his interview, showed Bergès a statement made by then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki on July 9, 2021.
“After careful consideration, a system has been established that allows for Hunter Biden to work in his profession within reasonable safeguards,” she said. “All interactions regarding the selling of art and the setting of prices will be handled by a professional galleries, adhering to the highest industry standards. Any offer out of the normal court would be rejected out of hand.”
Psaki added, “The galleries will not share information about buyers or prospective buyers, including their identities, with Hunter Biden or the administration, which provides quite a level of protection.”
Many have joked that the cocaine found in the White House belonged to the president’s son, Hunter Biden. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
When pressed further, Psaki stressed that “it would be challenging for an anonymous person who we don’t know and Hunter Biden doesn’t know to have influence — so that’s a protection.”
However, Bergès testified that at the time of the White House’s July 2021 statement, he had an agreement with Hunter Biden which called for him, instead, “to disclose to Hunter Biden who the purchasers of his art were.” Bergès said that contract was agreed to in December 2020.
Hunter Biden’s art buyers were supposed to be anonymous, according to then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s statement in July 2021. (Getty Images | AP Newsroom)
Bergès said that it was not until September 2021 that a new agreement with Hunter Biden was created. That agreement stated that “the gallery will not disclose the name of any buyers of artist’s artwork to artist or any agent of artist.”
Bergès stressed, though, that there was not a “White House-involved agreement,” and that Hunter Biden did know the identities of approximately 70% of the buyers of his art.
Meanwhile, Bergès testified that he had spoken to President Biden both on the phone and in person.
Bergès told lawmakers that he spoke to the president “at the White House wedding during Hunter’s — Hunter’s daughter getting married.”
Georges Bergès attends Dr. Gina Sam’s Resident Magazine Cover Party at Georges Bergès Gallery on Sept. 20, 2018 in New York City. (Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Hunter Biden’s daughter, Naomi Biden, got married at the White House on Nov. 19, 2022.
As for his phone conversation with the president, Bergès said, “My daughter finished camp, and he called to, you know, wish her, congratulate her for finishing camp and I answered the phone.”
Bergès’ testimony comes after the House formalized the impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
The inquiry is being led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith.
From left, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., speak to reporters after Hunter Biden defied a congressional subpoena to appear privately for a deposition. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Republicans are investigating any foreign money received by the Biden family, whether President Biden was involved in his family’s foreign business dealings and steps allegedly taken by the Biden administration to “slow, hamper, or otherwise impede the criminal investigation into the President’s son, Hunter Biden, which involves funds received by the Biden family from foreign sources.”
Republican investigators have suggested they are suspicious over whether Hunter Biden’s art career, which began in recent years, has led to any conflicts of interest between wealthy buyers and the White House.
“The Biden White House appears to have deceived the American people about facilitating an ethics agreement governing the sale of Hunter Biden’s art,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement earlier this month, calling the agreement a “sham.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
