President Joe Biden and his family had received expensive gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars from foreign leaders in 2023, including the most expensive gift of a $20,000 diamond to US first lady Jill Biden from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Washington Post reported citing the State Department.
All federal employees must report gifts from foreign government sources valued at $480 or more, according to US law. The most frequent recipients of foreign gifts were the president, first lady and Vice President Kamala Harris, given their positions. .
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were also among the senior US officials who received various gifts.
The State Department's Office of the Chief of Protocol had revealed its annual accounting a day ago to provide insight into the practice of gift-giving in diplomatic settings to rulers, senior government officials and secret service officials.
He claimed that Modi had gifted a 7.5-carat lab-grown diamond worth an estimated $20,000 in the presence of the president.
During his first state visit to the United States, Modi was gifted an antique American camera and a signed copy of “Collected Poems of Robert Frost,” among other items, reported The Washington Post.
At the time, the White House had said that Modi would receive a handmade gallery of early 20th-century American antique books as an official gift.
Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval also presented gifts to his American counterpart Sullivan in 2023.
Sullivan's lavish gifts included a silver statue in January 2023 and a wooden statue of an elephant in July 2023.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had gifted a carpet worth $525 to President Biden in 2022, while Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Masood Khan gifted a carpet worth $600 to US Government Senior Director Eileen Laubacher, in 2023.
Most of the gifts received by the Bidens were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, an independent agency of the United States government within the executive branch.
According to the federal agency, in modern times a president could receive 15,000 gifts a year.
According to the report, several employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including its director William J. Burns, had also received lavish gifts worth more than $132,000, including watches, diamond jewelry and perfumes.
A couple dozen gifts listed in the report for CIA employees were “destroyed,” including an Omega watch valued at $11,000 that was given to Burns.
The report does not reveal who delivered the gifts that were destroyed, the American publication reads.
He cited the United States Code, which states that the head of an agency within the intelligence community may request the exclusion of certain information “if the publication of such information could adversely affect the intelligence sources or methods of the United States.”
A CIA employee received a women's jewelry set consisting of a necklace, bracelet, ring and earrings, which was also among the destroyed gifts.
