Golf writer James Dodson claims Eric Trump told him in 2014 that all the funding for Trump golf courses comes from Russia while the two were at one of the family’s clubs.
“As we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years,'” Dodson told Boston public radio station WBUR-FM about golfing with the president’s son at Trump National Golf Club in Charlotte, N.C.
“He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”
The president has faced increased scrutiny over his alleged ties to Russia since U.S. intelligence communities have said Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Shortly before his inauguration, Trump tweeted that “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me.”
“I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” he wrote.
Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
Democrats have pushed for Trump to release his tax returns to prove he has no financial connections to Russia.
In a 2008 interview, Donald Trump Jr. called Russia a “really scary place” when discussing the Trump Organization’s potential investments in the country.
“After spending half a dozen trips to Russia in the last 18 months, several buyers have been attracted to our projects there and everything associated therewith. But it is definitely not an issue of being able to find a deal – but an issue of ‘Will I ever see my money back out of that deal or can I actually trust the person I am doing the deal with?’ As much as we want to take our business over there, Russia is just a different world,” he said.
He added that Russians “make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
“We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” he said.
