While Donald Trump and Jared Kushner have been selling US foreign policy in the Middle East, Donald Trump Jr. has been selling out everywhere else.
Donald Trump Jr. has a previously undisclosed business relationship with a longtime hunting buddy who helped raise millions of dollars for his father’s 2016 presidential campaign and has had special access to top government officials since the election, records obtained by The Associated Press show.
AP Reports that Junior’s “hunting buddy” Gentry Beach was involved in deals that range from dropping US sanctions imposed on Venezuela for human rights violations and persecution of political opponents, to a resort in Argentina and an oil purchase in Saudi Arabia. The National Security Council was forced to take a meeting with Beach, despite the fact that he was proposing the US reverse its own policies in Venezuela to embrace a dictator so corrupt he was starving his own people to remain in power.
Career foreign policy experts were instructed to take the meetings, first reported last April by the website Mic.com, at the direction of the West Wing because Beach and the businessman were friends of Trump Jr., the official said.
It may seem odd that Donald Trump Jr. and Gentry Beach were so anxious to open the doors to Venezuela at a time when its economy had collapsed, people were desperately trying to escape, and children were dying in the streets. Why lift sanctions on a nation where the government has crushed democracy, met protests with military force, and where President Nicolás Maduro has both covered up the depths of the crisis and refused international aid? Because Beach and Trump Jr. want to engage in some heavy-duty disaster capitalism.
Beach last year met with top National Security Council officials to push a plan that would curb U.S. sanctions in Venezuela and open up business for U.S. companies in the oil-rich nation.
Beach and Trump Jr. are far more than partners in elephant-murder and shock doctrine tactics. They’re also partners in a secret business set up last year to profit from Junior’s government connections.
Gentry Beach was an early investor in the Trump shakedown.
Beach was an avid fundraiser and campaigner for President Trump, particularly in Texas, where Trump Jr. told donors last March that Beach and another longtime hunting pal, Tom Hicks Jr., raised millions for his father’s campaign, according to the Dallas Morning News.
And now that scheme is in high gear, Beach took the logical next step.
Last October, Beach incorporated a business called Future Venture LLC in Delaware without listing any Trump connection, signing himself as the entity’s agent.
There might not be any listed Trump connection, but documents obtained by the AP show that the president of Future Venture LLC is Donald Trump Jr. The secretary of Future Venture LLC is Donald Trump Jr. The treasurer of Future Venture LLC is Donald Trump Jr.
“This feeds into the same concerns that we’ve had all along: The really fuzzy line between the presidency and the Trumps’ companies,” said Noah Bookbinder, who leads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a public policy group. “Donald Trump Jr. sort of straddles that line all the time.”
Trump’s family doesn’t straddle that line. They don’t believe there is a line.
For Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner and their buds like Gentry Beach, the government is just another way to extort dollars. And they’re not afraid to use it everywhere and every way. After all, childhood mortality is up 1,000 percent in Venezuela. That’s the smell of opportunity.