Barron Trump’s Tea Startup Lists Donor’s Palm Beach Mansion as HQ, Report

Credit: (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Barron Trump’s latest business venture — caffeinated herbal tea — is drawing scrutiny after a Friday Newsweek report revealed it was registered to the Palm Beach home of a longtime friend and donor to President Donald Trump.

Per the report, the president’s 19-year-old son is listed as a director of Sollos Yerba Mate Inc., a startup set to launch in April. Business filings show the company is registered to a $16 million, five-bedroom home near Mar-a-Lago owned by Jay Weitzman, a businessman who has donated to Trump and whose parking company has received federal contracts for years.

Weitzman has known the president for decades, telling Newsweek he went to school with Trump and has played tennis with him. He confirmed he donated $25,000 to Trump’s first inauguration and previously gave $2,700 to his 2016 campaign, saying the donation made him Trump’s seventh-biggest donor from Pennsylvania.

He went on to deny any involvement in the company, emphasizing to Newsweek that his grandson — Sollos director Spencer Bernstein — lives at the property, which is why it was used as the business’s address.

“Jay Weitzman is Spencer Bernstein’s grandfather, and Spencer currently lives at his house. Jay has zero association with the business,” Sollos Yerba Mate Inc. said in a statement.

Still, ethics experts said the arrangement raises concerns, particularly given Weitzman’s political ties and business interests.

Norm Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Fund and a former ethics counsel, told Newsweek that the youngest Trump’s venture “opens yet another potential avenue of seeking to influence the President through his family’s assorted business schemes.”

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the Project on Government Oversight was more blunt, calling the situation “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,” he said to Newsweek, adding that the Trump family connection “just adds another layer of possible conflict of interest.”

So far, Sollos Yerba Mate reported raising $1 million in private funding.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!