Hunter Biden Avoids Answering Laptop Question After Art Gallery Party
Hunter Biden snapped a retort Wednesday after being asked whether his infamous laptop had been returned.
Hunter was leaving a party celebrating the exhibition of his paintings at a New York City gallery when a New York Post employee asked if the computer seized by the FBI after being left at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 had been returned.
"There's always a smart-ass in the bunch," President Joe Biden's son said outside the Georges Berges Gallery in the Soho section of Manhattan.
Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen, then jokingly said: "It doesn't exist."
The Post in October 2020 revealed a laptop that had been left at a repair shop contained a trove of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s controversial foreign business dealings.
The laptop also contained explicit photos and video, including one that appeared to show him smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman.
Hunter Biden earlier this year said the laptop "certainly" could be his.
The president's 51-year-old son late last year said he was under investigation for possible tax fraud, and he told "CBS This Morning" in April that he had no plans to strike a plea deal.
Hunter, with wife Melissa and young son Beau, appeared at the art gallery where his novice paintings are being offered for up to $500,000 each amid concerns about influence-peddling.
The White House has said that the identities of any buyers of Hunter Biden’s art will be kept secret to prevent them from holding sway over the administration.
"There is no ethics program in the world that can be built around the head of state’s staff working with a dealer to keep the public in the dark about the identities of individuals who pay vast sums to the leader’s family member for subjectively priced items of no intrinsic value," Walter Shaub, who ran the Office of Government Ethics under then-President Barack Obama, tweeted last month.
"If this were [Donald] Trump, Xi [Jinping] or [Vladimir] Putin, you’d have no doubt whatsoever that this creates a vehicle for funneling cash to the first family in exchange for access or favors. Nor would you doubt that the appearance of monetizing the presidency was outrageous."
The Post reported that about 60 guests — including President Biden’s younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and reality TV star Meghan King of The Real Housewives of Orange County — attended the NYC event.
The gallery’s windows were covered by curtains, with Secret Service agents and private security guards standing outside.
The Hunter Biden exhibition opened two weeks earlier "to a mere trickle of prospective buyers," the Post reported.
Art critic Donald Kuspit said of Hunter Biden, "He’s a serious artist. The work is terrific." But Kuspit added that the self-taught painter didn’t sell any works during the opening.
"It really had nothing to do with money. It was just a social event," Kuspit told the Post.
The New York City party followed one in Los Angeles last month, when the guests included boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the president’s nominee to be ambassador to India.
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