Hunter Biden planning art show with dealer ‘who was charged with terrorist threats and has links to China’
JOE Biden’s son Hunter is reportedly preparing for an art show with an art dealer who was once arrested for “terrorist threats” and assault with a deadly weapon.
Hunter, who turns 51 next week, is supposedly teaming up with Manhattan art dealer Georges Berges, a dealer who has strong ties to China, according to the New York Post.
Prosecutors are still probing Hunter’s taxes and international business dealings as he continues to hold his 10 percent stake in Chinese investment firm BHR Partners, a private-equity firm with $2 billion in assets.
The president’s son apparently used the pool house of a sprawling Los Angeles home as his makeshift art studio, and is now trying his hand at the art world this year.
In January 2020, Hunter moved with his wife Melissa Cohen to a 2,0000-square-foot LA home connected to LA-based entrepreneur Shane Khoh, the CEO of SXU Investment Holdings LLC, the California company that owned the $3.8 million property since 2011.
Khoh said Hunter was paying $12,000 a month to stay in the property but said he did not know Hunter prior to the real estate rental.
“I have nothing to say about Hunter Biden,” Khoh said. “I have no comment.”
Hunter’s 10 percent stake in BHR Partners came under scrutiny after a federal watchdog requested the Justice Department launch “a full investigation” into Hunter, claiming he did not register under the federal Foreign Agent Registration act rules that govern people lobbying for a foreign entity.
“Hunter Biden’s tangled web of shell companies, LLCs, investment vehicles, and options agreements make it virtually impossible to know where he is getting income from,” said National Legal Policy Center director Thomas Anderson.
Anderson guessed Hunter’s artworks may be a business tactic to make some cash.
“We highly doubt, however, a career as an artist will do anything more than act as a vehicle to further shield where that income is coming from,” Anderson told the New York Post.
However, Hunter said painting was “literally keeping him sane right now,” adding it helped him with his drug and alcohol addictions.
Hunter’s art, which New York Times art critic Anthony Haden-Guest said was “pretty interesting stuff” and said Hunter’s “got talent,” often features pastel flowers and other shapes he draws by blowing alcohol ink through a metallic straw onto recycled paper.
Berges, 44, apparently will be Hunter’s dealer at his Soho gallery, which he opened in 2015 and often sees Spike Lee, Dave Chapelle and Susan Sarandon as frequent guests.
The dealer regularly features work by Chinese artists and recently said he would want to open art galleries in Beijing and Shanghai. “The questions that I always had was how’s China changing the world in terms of art and culture,” Berges told the China Daily in 2014.
However, he seems to have a criminal record of his own.
In 2016, Berges was accused of defrauding investor Ingrid Arneberg by $500,000. Berges countersued Arneberg and the two settled in 2018.
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Years earlier in 1998, the Post reported Berges was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and making “terrorist threats,” which were later dismissed.
He received 36 months probation in served 90 days in jail, according to the Santa Cruz Superior Court.
Berges did not respond to a request for comment from the Post, nor did a worker in his gallery say anything about Hunter’s upcoming art show.