WASHINGTON — President Biden failed to list free vacations at the homes of businesspeople on his annual financial disclosure form this week — drawing a rebuke from ethicists and Republicans amid an ongoing political firestorm over Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ similar non-reporting of free trips from a businessman.
Biden enjoyed three beach getaways at the homes of the wealthy and politically connected owners during the past-year reporting period.
In two instances, Biden is known not to have paid the owner and in the third case it’s suspected the president did not pay.
Ethics experts Walter Shaub, who led the Obama-era Office of Government Ethics, and Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, say free vacation-home stays need to be disclosed if the homeowner isn’t present — and it appears they were not — because a “personal hospitality” exception would not apply.
“The homeowner has to be a personal friend of the president or first lady and be present during the stay — otherwise that goes on the form. There’s no excuse not to have it on the form,” Painter, now a University of Minnesota law professor, told The Post.
“You can’t have the president just going around using people’s houses for free without disclosure. That’s no better than a Supreme Court justice staying on a yacht for free without disclosure,” Painter said.
Painter added that he can’t understand the omissions — in part, he says, because the presidential counsel’s office in the West Wing kept diligent tabs on such gifts when he was working there.
Biden reported accepting no gifts of any kind on the annual disclosure form he signed May 14.
“I think whoever is preparing these forms is not focusing. And if it’s intentionally left off, then you get into the [criminal] false statements law … and that could be a felony,” said Painter, who prominently criticized former President Donald Trump on ethics issues.
Shaub, who also routinely tore into Trump for alleged ethical lapses, said that he agrees that the “personal hospitality” exception would not apply it the homeowner wasn’t present.
“I have always been of the view that the exception cannot be used when the friend is not there, and I think arguments to the contrary make no sense,” Shaub said. “It’s not the rich-friend-who-can-give-you-stuff exception. It’s supposed to apply to things like your friend’s kids’ wedding or a home cooked meal with your friend.”
In August, Biden and his family spent seven days at the nine-bedroom Kiawah Island, SC, mansion of donor Maria Allwin, whose family runs a hedge fund, after asking her to use the home, a source told The Post at the time.
“They’re not paying. They’ve never paid,” the source said.
First lady Jill Biden extended her stay on Kiawah another five days after testing positive for COVID-19.
In November, the extended Biden family stayed for six days at the Nantucket Island compound of billionaire investor David Rubenstein, cofounder of the Carlyle Group.
The White House and a spokesperson for Rubenstein didn’t respond to inquiries about whether the Bidens paid.
In late December and early January, the first couple, their daughter Ashley and grandkids Natalie and Hunter stayed seven days for free as “guests” at the beachfront St. Croix home of businesspeople Bill and Connie Neville.
The arrangement turned heads because the home typically is a VRBO rental and because the Nevilles just weeks earlier gained access to Biden’s first state dinner honoring French President Emmanuel Macron, joining about 300 guests including many billionaires and political and cultural powerbrokers.
During prior reporting periods, including during his presidency and vice presidency, Biden stayed at each of the three homes and didn’t disclose the stays as gifts.
Biden previously used Rubenstein’s compound in late 2021 and didn’t disclose the stay as a gift. He stayed at Allwin’s beach house as VP in August 2009 and March 2013 and didn’t disclose it as a gift on his disclosure forms.
Biden visited St. Croix at least five times as VP between 2014 and 2016, according to local news reports, and again as a private citizen in 2019.
At least some of those stays were at the Nevilles’ Caribbean retreat, which is advertised as having “hosted President Biden on his many trips to St. Croix.”
VP Biden’s annual disclosures for those years don’t list free vacation-home stays from the Nevilles.
Painter said the pattern of non-reporting could spell political — if not legal — trouble for Biden.
“If you have multiple disclosure lapses, particularly involving the same donor or friend, that’s where you get into a situation where Clarence Thomas has been criticized for,” Painter said. “Once you might say it is a really careless mistake. You start to get into the second and third times and you start to wonder, ‘What the heck is going on here?'”
The Office of Government Ethics administers the executive branch ethics disclosure requirements and has not formally issued an edict on the personal-hospitality exception, though Shaub says that when he led the office “my recollection is that we told people who asked that the owner had to be present. That seems to be the only logical reading of the statute.”
The OGE declined to comment and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Shaub notes that federal law says “the exception applies to personal hospitality given ‘by’ an individual ‘at the personal residence of that individual.’ To me, the word ‘at’ seems to clearly refer to the location of the individual. Reading the word ‘at’ as referring to the location of the gift doesn’t make sense to me because the gift in this case IS the residence itself.”
However, some experts say that the statute lacks a clear mandate for disclosure in such instances.
“The executive branch does not have a requirement that a host remain on the premises for the personal hospitality exemption to apply,” said Kedric Payne, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center and a former Office of Congressional Ethics. “The property must be the donor’s personal residence or family property.”
The ambiguity could propel changes to tighten the rules.
“President Biden has stayed at donors’ lavish vacation homes and he’s not being honest with the American people,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who is leading an investigation of whether Biden misused his office as vice president to enrich his family through foreign business ventures in countries where he controlled US policy.
“Americans deserve the truth about the President and first family’s influence peddling,” Comer told The Post. “That is why we are pursuing legislation as part of our investigation into the Biden family’s financial schemes to strengthen ethics laws to provide greater transparency to the American people.”
The same law governs presidential and judicial ethics disclosures, though different entities enforce them.
In Thomas’ case, billionaire Harlan Crow reportedly joined the conservative jurist for two cruises and trips to his Adirondacks resort.
Thomas, whose trips were disclosed in a series by ProPublica, said he was advised that the ethics law’s “personal hospitality” exception meant that he didn’t have to report the trips or reimburse for private jet flights.
Further reporting showed Crow, who is not known to have had business before the court, provided financial support to Thomas’ mother and foster son.
A number of congressional Democrats — including Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — demanded that Thomas resign or be impeached and the US Judicial Conference in March tightened rules to specify that resorts didn’t count as personal residences exempt from reporting.
“This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
Mark Paoletta, a prominent Republican lawyer and friend of the Thomas family, said Biden’s non-disclosure and the relative lack of outcry this week shows Democratic attacks on Thomas are “a load of BS,” especially as Crow was present while hosting Thomas, unlike Biden’s benefactors.
Paoletta, who supported Thomas’ nomination while a White House lawyer under President George H. W. Bush and recently represented the justice’s wife Ginni Thomas in a congressional inquiry, pointed out that in at least one case the Bidens even asked for free use of a beach house.
“These baseless attacks on Justice Thomas have never been about ethics,” Paoletta said. “It’s about destroying the Supreme Court now that it’s no longer a left-wing super legislature.”
