Donald Trump Scotland visit - How Trump's Scots firms received hundreds of thousands from US government
US president’s visit to his resorts will reignite ethics concerns
From the moment Donald Trump was elevated to the highest public office in the US, grave concerns were expressed over how, or if, he could separate his role as president from his sprawling network of businesses around the world. Those concerns were well-founded.
On and off for the past eight and a half years, ethics watchdogs have been aghast at how Mr Trump’s resorts have charged US government agencies while he visited Trump Organisation properties. There were 500 such trips during his single term in office, with the Secret Service paying around £1.1 million.
While the vast majority of those visits were to Mr Trump’s US properties, his businesses in Scotland also received significant sums of money, raising fundamental questions over how Mr Trump’s resorts could benefit from his tenure in the White House. With Mr Trump set to come back to Scotland for the first time since 2023, those questions will be growing louder.
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The Scotsman first broke the news of how Turnberry was receiving US government money back in May 2018, when procurement records authorised by the State Department's bureau of European and Eurasian affairs showed that an initial payment of $10,113 [£7,828] was transferred to SLC Turnberry Ltd in April that year, with $2,444 [£1,891] subsequently returned.
The money involved in that visit - understood to be preparatory in nature ahead of Mr Trump’s visit to Scotland that summer - was relatively small, but as time wore on, the numbers mounted up. In June 2018, for example, federal government charge card documents showed the US State Department spent $7,724 [£5,979] at Turnberry in April 2017 to cover a visit by Mr Trump’s son Eric.
When Mr Trump visited Turnberry himself in July 2018, the bills increased to reflect the size of the travelling party, with the US State Department making two payments to Turnberry totalling nearly $70,000 [£54,181]. In 2019, there were further transactions, with the State Department ratifying a $13,835 [£10,709] transfer for what documentation referred to as “hotel accommodation” over the period of July 3 to August 1 that year. That same year, it emerged the Pentagon had spent around $184,000 [£142,419] at Turnberry.
Even some of the smallest bills were controversial. In October 2020, for example, The Scotsman revealed how Woody Johnson, the-then billionaire ambassador to the UK, ran up a bill totalling more than £1,000 while staying at Turnberry, with more than £400 spent on dinner, and hundreds of pounds on what federal government receipts referred to as “golf retail”. The bill was duly picked up by US taxpayers.
When Mr Trump made his first trip back to Scotland after being voted out of office, he did so as a private citizen, but the life-long security arrangements he is guaranteed as a former president meant he was accompanied by a cluster of Secret Service agents. In the wake of that trip, The Scotsman submitted a Freedom of Information request that ultimately revealed that Turnberry was paid $22,917 [£17,738] to cover accommodation. Mr Trump’s Aberdeenshire resort was paid $2,609 [£2,019] although details of the number of rooms hired at both properties, and the cost per night, were redacted.
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