Donald Trump’s sons’ financial ties to a major mining project backed by their father’s administration have apparently rankled even some within the president’s inner circle.
A New York Times investigation found that Donald Trump Jr., 48, and Eric Trump, 42, became financially linked to a major tungsten mining project in Kazakhstan shortly after the Trump administration helped secure the deal and signaled it could provide up to $1.6 billion in federal financing.
Trump administration officials involved in the deal told The Times, speaking anonymously, that they were disappointed by the involvement of the Trump family—as well as the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—in projects the government itself is helping to finance.
In September, Lutnick, 64, and Trump, 80, negotiated an agreement with Kazakhstan’s president granting a small U.S. mining company, Kaz Resources, access to Kazakhstan’s tungsten reserves, alongside approval for more than $1 billion in preliminary federal financing applications.
Tungsten is often referred to as a “war metal” because of its extreme hardness and very high melting point, which make it valuable for use in ammunition and military aviation components. The United States currently has no active commercial tungsten mines.
Within weeks of the September negotiations, Dominari Securities—a firm based in Trump Tower and partly owned by Don Jr. and Eric—joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in the mining project, The Times reports.
Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm overseen by the commerce secretary’s sons, Kyle and Brandon Lutnick, helped raise $210 million for one of the lead investors working with Dominari Securities on the deal, a type of transaction that typically generates millions of dollars in fees for the firm.
On Nov. 6, six days after the president’s two eldest sons joined other partners in taking a stake in the project, the Kazakh government and the Trump administration finalized the agreement.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Cantor Fitzgerald and Dominari Securities for comment, but received no immediate response.
“President Trump did the final negotiation with President Tokayev for this deal,” Kaz Resources executive chairman Pini Althaus told The Times.
Althaus, an Australia-born rabbi who moved to the United States, also told the outlet he was unaware of the Trump family’s alleged involvement, adding that he could “see how the optics might be disturbing to some people.”
In statements to The Times, both Trump sons denied involvement in the specifics of the deal, with Eric writing that he “has always been a passive investor with absolutely no management role.”
In response to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, a White House spokesperson said: “The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
“Securing and reshoring America’s critical supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary Lutnick along with the rest of the Administration continue to take historic action to safeguard America’s national and economic security,” the spokesperson added.
Aside from their alleged involvement in tungsten mining, Eric and Don Jr. have been active in digital currencies since the president announced early in his second term his ambition for the United States to become the “crypto capital of the world.”
“It’s wild, really, because there are so many physical manifestations of the corruption of this administration,” Colorado Rep. Jason Crow said on The Daily Beast Podcast, speaking on the topic of the president’s family benefiting from his time in office. “In the past, it would be almost kind of abstract and ethereal, right? Like some kind of fraud scheme or something,” he added.
Trump and his family have raked in nearly $2.5 billion since he took office last year, according to the House Oversight Democrats’ Trump Family Digital Grift Wealth Tracker.
The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
