The Real "Hunter" Scandal
Donald Trump, Jr. went to Mongolia, illegally slaughtered a rare and majestic animal, and used his political influence to stay out of prison.
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Imagine this. It’s the summer of 2019. Your dad is President. You can choose anywhere in the world for your summer vacation.
You spin the globe and you choose… Mongolia, the world’s second-largest landlocked nation.
Mongolia. WTF?
That’s right. Donald Trump, Jr. went to Mongolia in the summer of 2019. A nice quiet place to get away from the Fake News Media. And conveniently sandwiched between Russia and China, making it especially well-located for anyone planning a few secret meetings with oligarchs, spies and the “bankers” to whom your Dad just might owe $421 million in personally guaranteed loans that are coming due soon.
I’m not saying Donny, Jr. met secretly with any Russian agents or Chinese bankers. I’m just saying that he picked the perfect place to do it. Kinda like the time Ivanka went to Croatia with her BFF Wendy Deng in the summer of 2016. (Wendy Deng being the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, also an alleged Chinese spy, also a close friend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and also, in 2016, the rumored girlfriend of Mr. V. Putin of Moscow.)
Unlike Rudy Giuliani, I haven’t been working with Steve Bannon or any Russian agents to put these damning revelations together. All I know is what I read on the internet. But what I read on the internet is pretty bad.
Donald Trump, Jr. Got Away With Murder in Mongolia
As Propublica first reported, while “vacationing” in Mongolia, Number One Son “slayed a majestic long-horned argali sheep.”
And that was illegal.
Photo: Don, Jr. posing with a different sheep he killed for fun in 2018.
To make matters worse, Propublica quoted guides who said Little Donny “shot his argali at night, using a rifle with a laser sight.”
That doesn’t sound like “sport” to me by any definition. It sounds actually quite cowardly and disgusting.
And, like I said, illegal.
Why Didn’t Mongolia Lock Him Up?
Looks like a quid pro quo…
Afterward, Trump Jr. met privately with the country’s president, Khaltmaagiin Battulga… It isn’t clear what was discussed… (but) “What are the chances the Mongolian government would’ve done any of that to someone who wasn’t the son of the United States’ president?” asked Kathleen Clark, a professor specializing in legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She said that though Trump Jr. is not a government employee, he’s nonetheless politically influential, incentivizing foreign officials such as the Mongolian leader to treat him favorably out of a “desire on the part of a foreign government to curry favor with the president’s family.”
… It quacks like a quid pro quo…
About four months before Donald Trump Jr. went to Mongolia in August, where he reportedly managed to get a coveted permit to kill a threatened-species of sheep after he shot and killed the animal, the Mongolian ambassador and foreign minister visited Mar-a-Lago.
… And it sounds like the only way to get a permit is with a quid pro quo:
According to the report, permits to hunt argali sheep are controlled by “an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics.” Trump Jr. received the permit on Sept. 2, after he left the region.
So another Trump crime went unpunished. Then, to make matters worse:
U.S. Taxpayers Got a Bill for $77,000
As CREW uncovered in June 2020, the full cost to taxpayers of Little Donny’s jaunt to Mongolia was $60,000 more than was at first revealed—with the added costs all associated with his entirely unofficial detour to meet the Mongolian president.
Because the original figure appeared to be an undercount and did not include any mention of Don Jr.’s stop in Ulaanbaatar, where he met privately with the Mongolian president, or flight costs, CREW appealed the request. The new records show that the full cost of the trip was actually $76,859.36, including the first and second round of receipts provided to CREW.
To sum up: Avid “hunter” Donald Trump, Jr. took a “hunting” trip to Mongolia last year. He didn’t plan it very well, because he didn’t get the permits he needed to kill all the trophy animals he wanted to slaughter. He shot a rare and endangered Argali sheep under cover of night using a coward’s laser-sighted rifle. He used his political connections to avoid punishment for this heinous and depraved crime. And then he sent taxpayers a $77,000 bill to pay for the Secret Service protection he received on this “vacation.”
If Hunter Biden had done all that I’d be really mad.
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