Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
As global investors with an eye for an opportunity, it is easy to see why Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have alighted on the idea of a resort on Albania’s coast. It is not just a stunning spot; in the language of American realtors, it is ripe with opportunity on the last undeveloped stretch of the Dalmatian coast.
You can imagine the pitch doing the rounds in New York. To the south are Greece’s taverna-strewn Ionian Islands, including the home of Odysseus. To the north, Montenegro’s coastline is concreted over with hotels. Beyond that, Croatia has a 300-mile treasure trail. Here is your chance to fill in the last piece of the Dalmatian jigsaw. And it’s good for Albania!
Well, absolutely it makes sense for what is one of Europe’s smallest and poorest countries to try to cash in at last on its beaches. When I first visited the country in the 1990s, soon after the downfall of communism, I stayed in the drabbest of state hotels and remember imagining happily but without much confidence that one day its coast could fund its recovery. But if Donald Trump’s political advisers have any say in his entourage’s affairs — or for that matter any good sense — they would be advising his daughter and son-in-law to walk away now.
As the list of the Trump circle’s business entanglements grows and grows, it seems ever more likely it contains the seeds of the Trump project’s decline. As former UK prime minister Boris Johnson found to his cost, it is sometimes a seemingly small scandal that can prove a tipping point.
In Albania, the Trump-Kushner plan has ignited the “Flamingo Revolution”. Nightly protests, backed by the pop star Dua Lipa, were sparked by concerns the project would harm a nature reserve known for the exotic birds. They are now targeting more broadly the prevailing culture of crony capitalism, and a scandal over seemingly corrupt land sales linked to the proposed site.
On one level this Balkan drama may appear remote compared to conflicts of interest over say World Liberty Financial, the Trump-backed crypto venture. But this is about more — or rather even more — than the dear flamingos and ambient sleaze. This is about a sense that if you are close to Trump, the normal rules do not apply. In its simplicity and egregiousness, this points to what could be the Democrats’ strongest attack line. There is surely fertile terrain here for hearings if they win back the House of Representatives in November.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Kushner’s consortium. But the signal their plan sends is dire. As the US president’s lead mediator in global crises, Kushner is arguably subordinate only to vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio in US foreign policy. Yet there he is pursuing a mega-investment overseas, and in a country which is notoriously corrupt.
What has happened to the old principle of government that required you to park business interests — and fill out disclosure forms? When I put that question to a former US foreign service official, they replied that conflicts of interest had become “a feature not a bug” of the system, adding: “I tell old colleagues to keep notes of every meeting and not to get involved.”
Trump probably admires Julius Caesar; after all, the dictator had no time for constitutional niceties. But the US president clearly lacks Caesar’s instincts on propriety. When Caesar divorced his wife after allegations of an affair, he supposedly said his family should be not just “free from guilt but free from the suspicion of it”. That is the issue here.
As Viktor Orbán, the former prime minister of Hungary, learnt when he was defeated in elections in April, if there is one thing that finally alienates voters it is a sense that elites are profiting from power. He could probably have gone on pursuing his nationalist projects indefinitely if his circle had not so patently succumbed to greed.
At this point Trump-weary readers will say it is late in the day, if not naive, to sound shocked by such behaviour. The more cynical will rightly add this has always happened behind the scenes. But that is the point: behind the scenes.
The US and indeed my own country, Britain, and most others, have always had conflicts of interest. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was caught up in such a scandal in Ukraine. But in recent decades at least these have been confined to the shadows. The difference now is that the profiteering is in plain sight. People close to Trump seem willing to flaunt their commercial ambitions.
Take Pakistan, a country that, like Albania, has a weak record in tackling corruption, is dominated by rich families, and has links to Trump’s team. Pakistan’s de facto ruler, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has met Zach Witkoff — the son of Trump’s other lead mediator, the businessman Steve Witkoff — at least twice. And lo! Pakistani officials have done fledgling deals with World Liberty Financial, of which the younger Witkoff is CEO and a co-founder.
As for Albania, this investment will probably suffer the fate of another Kushner-backed Balkans project: his plan to build a luxury hotel in Serbia’s capital Belgrade was eventually axed last year after a political storm.
But what of America? Will this brazen culture become an accepted standard, normalising the use of public office for private gain? Or will the country respond by erecting stronger safeguards? If the Democrats were smart, this and not anti-capitalism would be their focus in November.
[email protected]
