Barron Trump’s beverage business adventure is registered at a home owned by a longtime friend and donor to his father, according to a report.
The first son, 19, the youngest child of Donald Trump, is listed as a director of Sollos Yerba Mate Inc., with the company based near the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The business, which will sell a type of caffeinated herbal tea popular in South America, has been found to be registered at a $16 million, five-bedroom house in Palm Beach owned by Jay Weitzman, a longtime friend of the president who has donated to his political campaigns, Newsweek reported.
Weitzman, a real estate magnate whose parking company, Park America, has received federal contracts for decades, denies any involvement in Barron Trump’s business venture. His grandson Spencer Bernstein is also listed as one of the directors of Sollos Yerba Mate and lives with him at the Palm Beach mansion.
A spokesperson for Sollos Yerba Mate said Weitzman “has zero association with the business.”
Alongside Barron Trump and Bernstein, others listed as directors of Sollos Yerba Mate include Rodolfo Castillo, Stephen Hall, and Valentino Gomez. Bernstein and Hall are both believed to have attended Oxbridge Academy with the president’s son.
While there is no allegation of wrongdoing against Weitzman, Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund and former President Barack Obama’s ethics czar, told Newsweek that Barron Trump’s business “opens yet another potential avenue of seeking to influence the president through his family’s assorted business schemes.”
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the nonpartisan watchdog Project on Government Oversight, added that the links between Weitzman and Sollos Yerba Mate looked “fishy from the standpoint of government ethics and conflicts of interest.”
“A company that receives federal contract awards whose principals are also major donors and personal connections of the president is, at minimum, the appearance of impropriety and possible pay-to-play corruption,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.
“While this kind of thing is not new, it is the kind of thing that has become extremely brazen and more common during the second Trump administration.”
Weitzman—who donated $25,000 toward Trump’s first inauguration, as well as $2,700 to his presidential campaign in August 2016—denied he has ever used his decades-long friendship with Trump for financial gain or to benefit his parking company.
“Neither I nor any of my family has ever made money from whatever relationship we have had with the president,” he told Newsweek.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White house for comment.
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