12
CJR
Field Notes FROM THE ELECTORATE
WHIT E HOUSE
The Trouble with Frictionless Briefings By Hunter Walker
ILLUSTRATOR
Kevin Whipple
O
N JULY 9, THE WHITE HOUSE WAS
staring down a major story about President Biden’s son. The day before, the Washington Post had published a piece revealing that Hunter Biden’s artwork would be sold for “prices as high as $500,000.” Officials crafted an agreement aimed at keeping the identity of the buyers confidential, including from the artist, but the situation set off ethical alarm bells, particularly because Hunter Biden became an artist only recently. As Walter Shaub, who used to run the White House Office of Government Ethics, put it to the Post: “What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name.” So it was a bit odd when Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, took the podium for the day’s briefing and received just one question on the subject, from Weijia Jiang, of CBS News. Psaki described the sale agreement as having “quite a level of protection and transparency.” Jiang pressed on the fact that it relied on the judgment of a gallerist and asked if the White House would do anything “to work with the owner to make sure there’s not impropriety there when it is ultimately sold.” Psaki insisted that the setup was ironclad. “It would be challenging for an anonymous person who we don’t know and Hunter Biden doesn’t know to have influence—so that’s a protection,” she replied. Then she dismissed Jiang and moved on to the next reporter. No one else in the room followed up. Psaki managed to get the story off the table quickly, limited its reach, and kept the press corps’s focus elsewhere. (At the top of her agenda that
