Hunter Biden’s Art Dealer Says He Spoke With President Biden

President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, attend the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on April 10, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Hunter Biden’s art dealer spoke twice with President Joe Biden, the gallerist told members of Congress in a recent interview.

Georges Berges told the House Judiciary Committee in a closed-door interview that he never spoke with the White House. But he did say he spent time in-person with President Biden, the father of Mr. Biden.

“Have you spoken to President Biden?” Mr. Berges was asked.

“Yes,” he said.

When asked whether that was in-person or over the phone, he said, “both.”

The in-person encounter was at the White House in 2022 when Naomi Biden, Mr. Biden’s daughter and President Biden’s granddaughter, was married there, the art dealer said.

The other time was over the phone.

“My daughter finished camp, and he called to wish her, congratulate her for finishing camp, and I answered the phone,” Mr. Berges said.

“Just said ‘hi.’ Just ‘hi, hello,’” Mr. Berges said, describing the conversations. “I didn’t discuss anything related to Hunter’s art.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“That’s interesting, because the Oversight Project searched the visitor logs and Berges doesn’t show up.  So did he not go to the White House or did they keep him off the logs?” Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times in an email.

The contact between President Biden and one of Mr. Biden’s business associates is the latest interaction to be discovered by House Republicans as they probe the president for possible wrongdoing, with an eye toward impeachment.

Devon Archer, who worked with Mr. Biden for years, told members that President Biden attended several dinners at Washington’s Cafe Milano that featured multiple associates of Mr. Biden, including Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi. President Biden also participated in business calls, according to Mr. Archer.

Emails obtained by the House also showed President Biden repeatedly in contact with Eric Schwerin, another of Mr. Biden’s former associates. President Biden, who was vice president at the time, exchanged dozens of emails with Mr. Schwerin while using a pseudonym, the emails showed.

Charles Provini, who was president of a hedge fund run by Mr. Biden and the president’s brother, has also said that President Biden, who was a senator at the time, took part in business calls. While Mr. Archer said business was never discussed when President Biden was on the phone, Mr. Provini said business sometimes came up.

Tony Bobulinski, another former associate of the Bidens, said in 2020 that he talked about business with President Biden in 2017. President Biden was “plainly familiar” with his family’s business plans, according to Mr. Bobulinski.

“The president was not in business with his son or anyone else in the family, and House Republicans’ own witnesses, including Devon Archer, have testified that the president never even discussed business with his son,” the White House has said previously.

“I did not” engage with Mr. Biden’s business associates, President Biden told reporters in December 2023.

Became Mr. Biden’s Art Dealer

Mr. Berges also said, according to the transcript reviewed by The Epoch Times, that he did not speak to President Biden before he became president.

Mr. Berges met Mr. Biden in 2019, introduced by a mutual friend, producer Lanette Phillips. Ms. Phillips has hosted fundraisers for President Biden.

Mr. Berges flew to California to see Mr. Biden’s art and said he was taken by Mr. Biden’s pieces and his “personal narrative.”

“His story was really a redemptive story, which I always felt was the American story,” Mr. Berges said, referring to how Mr. Biden engaged in years of drug abuse.

A relationship developed, and Mr. Berges entered into an agreement in late 2020 to sell Mr. Biden’s art. The original agreement stated that Mr. Berges would disclose the buyers’ identities to Mr. Biden, which was an unusual arrangement, Mr. Berges said. Mr. Berges also said he did not actually disclose the identities.

The first sale took place on Dec. 11, 2020. A woman who has bought other pieces from Mr. Berges bought that artwork. William Jacques, a good friend of Mr. Berges’s and who owns a share of Mr. Berges’s gallery in New York City, then purchased several pieces created by Mr. Biden, according to Mr. Berges.

Elizabeth Naftali bought one piece in 2021, shortly after President Biden was sworn in, and another after President Biden appointed her to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in mid-2022, Mr. Berges testified.

Ms. Naftali has not returned requests for comment.

In late 2021, an updated agreement stated that Mr. Berges would not disclose the identities of buyers to Mr. Biden.

The updated agreement was not crafted with input from the White House, the art dealer said. White House officials in 2021 said they helped craft an arrangement that would shield the buyers’ names from both Mr. Biden and the White House.

Mr. Biden ended up learning that Mr. Jacques, Ms. Naftali, and lawyer Kevin Morris purchased some of his pieces, Mr. Berges testified. But he said he was not responsible for that knowledge being acquired, so he was not in breach of his contract.

“If [Hunter] knew the identities of some of the buyers—it’s because they were his friends or by happenstance,” Mr. Berges told Fox News in the wake of the testimony. “My obligation to Hunter is to not disclose the buyers—which I haven’t.”

Mr. Berges also said in the private session that it was unfortunate people assumed he shared the same politics as the Bidens.

“Politically, I was not aligned, and I wasn’t going to change that,” he said. Many of his buyers were also not aligned with the Democrats, he said.

Federal records show Mr. Berges donated to former President Donald Trump and other Republicans, although he has also donated to ActBlue, a Democrat organization.

Mark Tapscott contributed to this report.