Hunter Biden’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, refused on Thursday to provide the House Oversight Committee requested disclosures into his art sales to anonymous buyers.
Hunter, an attorney and former lobbyist who is under investigation for tax fraud, has reportedly sold about 12 paintings to anonymous buyers during his father’s term as President of the United States. The price tags of artwork are reported to be $500,000 each.
In January, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) requested Bergès testify before Congress and turn over relevant information about the art sales. Comer told Breitbart News in 2022 he is 95 percent sure the buyers of Hunter’s art are Chinese buyers, potentially implicating President Biden.
On Thursday, Bergès, who has a history of doing business in China, told Comer through his newly hired attorney, that he will not provide information related to Hunter’s art sales because the sales are intended to be secret — the very issue in which Comer has raised concerns.
“In light of these considerations, providing the documents and information requested in your letter seemingly would defeat the efforts of Mr. Biden and the White House to avoid the ‘serious ethical concerns’ that you raise,” William Pittard told Comer. “Mr. Berges hopes that you and Mr. Biden can resolve that tension.”
According to Pittard’s LinkedIn, his legal specialty is “Congressional and White Collar Investigations.” Pittard is a partner at a Washington, DC, law firm, KaiserDillon.
The art market is known for corrupt and shady practices. A Senate subcommittee report detailed in 2020 how the art market serves as a vehicle for money laundering.
“Why would anyone pay Hunter Biden top dollar for artwork that is arguably worthless? He’s no Pablo Picasso,” Comer has stated. “Foreign adversaries, including China, have used transactions involving sham art sales to launder money & evade sanctions.”
Hunter’s art scandal comes as the congressman is probing into Hunter for violations, including wire fraud and money laundering. Those investigations have caused Comer to seek Hunter’s bank records in which 150 suspicious wire transfers have been flagged by U.S. banks regarding Biden family business deals in foreign nations, such as China.
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.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.