On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress that the former reality star directed a “straw bidder” to drive up the price of a portrait of himself at an auction in the Hamptons in 2013.
A newspaper clipping Cohen provided to Congress identified the man as Stewart Rahr, a retired pharmaceutical billionaire.
A longtime friend of Trump’s, the 73-year-old Rahr is a fixture of gossip columns, and is known for his escapades with beautiful women and celebrities including Paris Hilton and Leonardo DiCaprio, according to Forbes. “Stewie Rah Rah, the Number One King of All Fun,” as he sometimes calls himself, is also known to send mass emails with photos of himself with his celebrity entourage.
“He’s different than other people,” Trump said of Rahr in a 2013 Forbes profile. “He’s a character, and he’s fun to be with.”
Rahr owns an art collection featuring works by rich-guy favorites Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Damien Hirst, and Jeff Koons. In 2010, he sold one of the largest privately held wholesale pharmaceutical distributors in the country, Kinray, to Cardinal Health in 2010 for $1.3 billion.
Stuart Rahr, wearing his signature sunglasses, is known for his love of women. Photo by David X. Prutting/Patrick McMullan, courtesy Getty Images.
The painting of Trump was the work of William Quigley. According to the artnet Price Database, six of his works were bought in at Monaco’s Hermitage Fine Art sale last November, with estimates ranging from € 2,500 ($2,842) to €35,000 ($39,795).
As of press time, Rahr’s charity, the Stewart J. Rahr Foundation, had not responded to artnet News’s request for comment.
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