Posted on 07/30/2023 5:02:21 PM PDT by Libloather
**SNIP**
Hirsh Naftali has contributed $13,000 to President Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and this year has given $36,500 to the Democratic National Committee. White House visitor logs show that she has been at the executive mansion 13 times in the past 18 months. A Biden administration official said the art purchase was not the reason for Hirsh Naftali’s appointment, and it’s not clear when she bought the artwork or how much she paid for it. What is clear is that Hunter knew.
Hunter also knew that one of the purchasers was entertainment attorney Kevin Morris, whom he met in December 2019 at a fundraiser for his father. The New York Times reported in May 2022 that Morris loaned more than $2 million to the president’s son to help him pay off back taxes in the midst of an IRS criminal investigation. In a courtroom on Wednesday, a negotiated plea agreement with the Department of Justice collapsed when the judge’s questions prodded prosecutors to admit that Hunter Biden could still face charges in connection with large payments he received from foreign entities, possibly violating foreign-lobbying and money-laundering laws.
Congressional investigators have obtained bank records and IRS whistleblower testimony that point to a pattern of large payments to members of the Biden family for nothing of visible value. The House Oversight Committee has been trying to get records of the Biden art sales from the Georges Bergès Gallery, but Bergès has so far refused to cooperate.
In July 2021, just as the Berges Gallery was preparing to market Hunter Biden’s paintings, the gallery received an unusually large “disaster assistance loan” from the Small Business Administration in the amount of $350,000.
This is the very picture of an ethics problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at presstelegram.com ...
General Motors/Customer service
1 (800) 462-8782
Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time)
Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time
Message: It is sickening to witness GM hiring a Biden amidst charges of Biden influence-peddling running rampant.
Not just any Biden but the daughter of Biden’s sister, a woman who he considers his political guru.
Then again, perhaps the opportunistic son, Hunter Biden, was unavailable?
We wait with bated breath to hear the number of tax
dollars GM pocketed for giving a “needy” Biden a job.
And how soon the ill-timed EV venture will go belly-up on the taxpayers dime.
In July 2021, just as the Berges Gallery was preparing to market Hunter Biden’s paintings, the gallery received an unusually large “disaster assistance loan” from the Small Business Administration in the amount of $350,000.
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
These grifters don’t miss a trick.
p
Not an ethical problem but a legal problem.
The gallery was facilitating money laundering.
Quid pro joe. Keeping it all in the family.
Just imagine what Jack Smith would be able to make of all this.
IMAGINE.
Hunter Biden will take a needed break from drawing as he has run out of crayons.
It is a money laundering scheme. He even threw in one for his baby daughter to choose as part of her child support. What judge allows such... yeah, we know.
Does she have the same qualifications as do the rest of her millionaire family? Maybe the expert Hunter showed her the ropes?
Ugh... Biden’s “art” looks like ticks, body lice, mold spores and bacteria. Nasty.
The secondary market for these works of art would be practically nonexistent.
Ethics is not in the Biden vocabulary.
presstelegram.com
When President Barack Obama offered the job of secretary of state to then-senator Hillary Clinton, the offer came with a condition. Obama insisted on an ethics agreement that would limit foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, and he demanded the right to approve all of former President Bill Clinton’s paid speaking engagements.
The reason is obvious. It’s a problem to have an open conduit for large amounts of money to be paid to the family of a powerful public official, especially when the the value of whatever is being provided in exchange for the money is completely subjective.
And that brings us to Hunter Biden and his remarkably quick success as an artist.
Business Insider reported last week that the president’s son has earned at least $1.3 million from his art since becoming a professional artist two years ago. One anonymous buyer purchased 11 pieces for a total of $875,000.
In 2021, the White House said a negotiated ethics agreement with the Georges Bergès Gallery would ensure that the buyers’ identities would be secret from the public and the artist, to avoid the appearance of influence-buying. But Business Insider learned that Hunter Biden himself told at least three people the identities of two of the buyers.
Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, appointed by President Biden to the prestigious Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, is one of Hunter’s art patrons. She was named to the commission in July 2022, about eight months after the Georges Bergès Gallery held Hunter’s first art show in Hollywood, where his rookie paintings were priced as high as $500,000.
<><>Hirsh Naftali has contributed $13,000 to President Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign
<><>and this year has given $36,500 to the Democratic National Committee.
<><>White House visitor logs show was in the executive mansion 13 times in the past 18 months.
A Biden administration official said the art purchase was not the reason for Hirsh Naftali’s appointment, and it’s not clear when she bought the artwork or how much she paid for it.
What is clear is that Hunter knew.
The paintings would look wonderful if you are on an acid trip.
Does anyone know their way around the art world? It would be interesting to see a list of sales and prices realized by new and emerging artists. I wonder if Hunter Biden stands out like a sore thumb as by far the most financially successful newcomer on the fine arts scene.
nypost.com
By Isabel Vincent
October 9, 2021 1:19pm Updated
Art gallery repping Hunter Biden received over $500K federal COVID loan, records show
pic——Georges Berges Gallery
The Georges Berges Gallery on West Broadway in Manhattan.
J.C.Rice
A federal COVID loan to the art gallery repping Hunter Biden more than doubled after his father took office, records show.
The Georges Berges Gallery initially received a $150,000 COVID “disaster assistance loan” from the Small Business Administration last year, according to public records.
But the loan was recently “revised,” with the SBA approving a further $350,000 to the SoHo gallery this summer, records show.
The approval came on July 26, in the lead-up to Berges’ exclusive marketing of 15 paintings by the president’s scandal-scarred son, public records show.
In addition to the COVID disaster assistance loans, the SoHo gallery received nearly $80,000 in two payments in April 2020 and February 2021 under the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program, funds meant to help businesses keep up with paychecks to employees during the pandemic.
All tolled, $580,000 in taxpayer-funded COVID relief aid was doled out to a gallery with only two employees, according to SBA records.
Berges declined to specifically respond to repeated queries from The Post on whether the Bidens interceded in his loans; if any of the government cash went directly to Hunter Biden as a salary or stipend; or if any of it was used to market his artwork.
“I received my PPP loan in April of 2020 when Donald Trump was president, along with countless other galleries which, considering a global pandemic was happening, we had every right to. … Most galleries received this loan,” Berges told The Post in an email. “We were not unique.”
While there is no evidence President Biden helped secure the additional $350,000 loan, a watchdog group found that of the more than 100 galleries in New York City’s 10th congressional district, which includes SoHo, TriBeCa and Chelsea, the Georges Berges Gallery received “by far” the largest SBA disaster loan windfall.
“We’ve reached a new low in American politics where the President’s son gets his midlife crisis art career subsidized by the American people as part of our pandemic response to COVID,” said Tom Anderson, director of the government integrity project at the National Legal and Policy Center.
The Virginia-based organization this week submitted a complaint to the SBA questioning the the taxpayer-funded loans to the gallery, and noting the discrepancy in the size of its loan when compared to other local galleries.
“You can’t make this up,” Anderson said, adding that funds from the federal loans could have been used to promote Biden’s work — a possible ethical breach. “This is a unique situation in which the president’s son is directly benefiting from federal loans made to a third party,” he said.
Another government ethics expert questioned the gallerist’s loan.
“If he [Georges Berges] got any special treatment on the loans from the president, that could be problematic,” said Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and former chief White House counsel to President George W. Bush, from 2005 to 2007.
Berges, 45, told The Post that he met Biden through collectors in Los Angeles two and a half years ago, and has helped the largely self-taught and once drug-addled entrepreneur turn his abstract expressionist painting from a hobby to a full-time job.
Last week Berges held a private viewing for 200 celebrities and collectors at the Milk Studios in Los Angeles. Guests, including Los Angeles Mayor and Biden nominee for ambassador to India Eric Garcetti and former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, nibbled hors d’oeuvres as they viewed Biden’s canvases and prints, which are priced between $75,000 and $500,000.
A federal COVID loan to the art gallery repping Hunter Biden more than doubled after his father took office
An exhibit of the work that was scheduled to open at the SoHo gallery this month has been postponed to the spring, a source told The Post Thursday.
Even before the LA show, Biden sold five prints, valued at $75,000 each, The Post revealed this week. In an interview with The Post on Saturday Berges’ publicist denied that any of Biden’s prints had been sold and would not specify when the exhibit of Biden’s work would open at the gallery, citing security concerns.
In an effort to prevent influence-peddling, the White House promised that the buyers of Biden’s art work would remain anonymous and that the gallery owner, Berges, would not disclose their identities to the president. But critics have already pointed out that the artist’s participation in publicity events to promote his work makes this arrangement difficult to enforce. “I’ve said from the beginning it wasn’t going to work to make it anonymous,” said Painter. “Word is going to get out.”
Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, an upstate Republican who is a member of the House’s Small Business Committee, noted that “Hunter Biden’s recent diversion into the art world is the perfect example of Washington DC grifters profiting from public service.
Hunter Biden’s art is finally going up for sale at an NYC gallery, with the most expensive pieces expected to top $500,000, and buyers promised anonymity.
“Revelations that Hunter Biden’s art broker was granted a massive SBA loan further erodes public trust in the President, just when you thought it could not go any lower,” she told The Post.
A spokesman for the SBA would not discuss individual loans, but said that under the Biden administration, small businesses could apply or “revise” their loan for exponentially higher amounts. “Businesses may apply for an additional increase even if they have already applied for and received previous loans,” said Matthew Coleman, the New York spokesman for the SBA.
The long-term SBA loans, which carry favorable interest rates of 3.75 percent, can be secured by personal property, but public land records show the gallery used none of its property as collateral.
The SBA approved more than $270 billion COVID disaster relief loans to small businesses in fiscal 2021, which ended last month.
In addition to Biden, the West Broadway gallery, which has an outlet in Berlin, represents 18 other artists.
Biden, 51, began painting a few years ago, partly to deal with addictions to alcohol and drugs, struggles he documented in “Beautiful Things,” a memoir released in April.
Biden has been at the center of bombshell scandals, including alleged corruption in his business dealings with China and Ukraine.
Additional reporting by Jon Levine
MEMO TO GM
Why EVs Are ‘Piling Up’ at Dealerships, Despite Massive Taxpayer Subsidies
Headline USA ^ | July 27, 2023 | Staff
Posted on 7/28/2023, 3:12:29 PM by Red Badger
(By Jon Miltimore, FEE) Ford Motor recently announced it is slashing prices on its F-150 Lightning, an electric vehicle the company rolled out in 2021.
The Lightning now carries a suggested retail price of $49,995, about $10,000 lower than its previous recommended price tag ($59,974), a reduction the company says is possible because of lower “battery raw material costs and continued work on scaling production and cost.”
It’s certainly possible that reduced overhead from battery minerals and production costs played a role in Ford’s decision to trim its price tag by nearly 20%, but that may be only half the story.
Several reports show EVs are not exactly flying off dealership lots. In fact, there’s a glut of them.
snip
Plealess Hunter’s lucky he’s a “successful painter”.....snx. Corrupt Dad “needs” the money.
FReeper Reeses posted: Long before Hunter found out he was a budding Rembrandt,
the daughter of a Chinese Communist bureaucrat suddenly became a painter of renown
who had instant commercial success.......to launder Dad’s bribes.
At one time, you could look this story up easily, but it has since been scrubbed off the internet.
Hunter grabbed onto the scheme bigtime.....
to help out his “poor daddy” needing a new money laundry.
Seems Demonrats get all their money-making ideas from corrupt communists
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