George W. Bush's Paintings Leaked Online After Private E-mail Accounts Hacked: Pictures

USMagazine, Friday, February 8, 2013, 5:00pm (PST)

George W. Bush has kept a relatively low profile since leaving the White House in 2009. But now, thanks to an apparent hacker who goes by the name Guccifer, the world can see what the former President has been up to these last few years -- painting.

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According to the Smoking Gun, which first exposed the hack, Guccifer got into the private e-mail accounts of several Bush family members, including George W. and his father, George H.W. He claims to have swiped "a lot of stuff," including personal information, pictures, messages about the elder Bush's health, and two photos that George W. Bush sent to his sister of paintings that he was supposedly working on. (New York Magazine reported in 2012 that the 66-year-old father-of-two had taken up art as a hobby.)

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The paintings in question appear to be self-portraits. One shows a grey-haired man naked and standing in a shower. He is shown only from the waist up, and his back is to the viewer, but his face is visible in a small shaving mirror that hangs from the running shower head.

The other painting is of a man in a bathtub, from the subject's own point-of-view. It shows the man's outstretched legs half-submerged in water under a running faucet.

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The Smoking Gun reports that Guccifer also allegedly intercepted a picture of the former Commander-in-Chief at work on his craft, painting a landscape of St. Ann's Episcopal Church, a seaside chapel near the family's Maine retreat. Other photos show George H.W. Bush in the hospital, and George W. Bush posing next to a cardboard cutout of an artist with his face plastered on it. 

The hacker told TSG that "the feds" have been investigating him for some time and that he has hacked "hundreds of accounts." The Bush family hack, he said, is "just another chapter in the game." According to the Associated Press, however, the FBI has launched a criminal investigation into the incident.

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: George W. Bush's Paintings Leaked Online After Private E-mail Accounts Hacked: Pictures