Donald Trump Jr .’s visit to Mongolia last year to hunt an endangered breed of sheep cost American taxpayers close to $77,000, an ethics watchdog has found.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) revealed in a report this week that Trump Jr.’s trip to Mongolia in August 2019 to hunt a rare breed of sheep led to a $76,859.36 bill for Secret Service protection. The agency had originally claimed that the eight-day trip cost a total of $17,000, but CREW appealed the estimate, saying that the agency had undercounted the total.
Last month, a top-ranking Secret Service official informed CREW that “an additional document containing costs” had been found, noting that the total cost of air travel had not been included. The new documents showed that the cost of the trip was close to $60,000 more than the initial estimate.
“These Secret Service payments show how much taxpayer money directly funded Don Jr.’s trip, and show that the cost was much steeper than the agency originally admitted,” CREW said in its report. “As a son of the president, Donald Trump Jr. is entitled to Secret Service protection and should be protected, but taxpayers deserve to know how much they are paying to facilitate his trophy hunting and interactions with major political donors and foreign leaders.”
A source close to Trump Jr. told USA Today that the president’s eldest son paid for “100 percent” of the trip outside of Secret Service protection.
The trip itself had already been a point of controversy, USA Today noted. A report from ProPublica last year claimed that Trump Jr. received special treatment to obtain a “rare” permit to hunt an argali sheep, which is listed as a threatened species. The Mongolian government pushed back against those reports, saying that Trump Jr. was “participating in an important aspect of the Mongolian Government’s conservation program for the endangered Argali Sheep.”
The cost of protecting adult members of President Donald Trump’s family has been a subject of scrutiny, with critics noting that the Secret Service is used to cover business travel and leisure trips for the family members despite President Trump being a billionaire. As The Inquisitr reported, a trip to Uruguay for Eric Trump led to a nearly $100,000 price tag, which was picked up by taxpayers.
The adult sons of Donald Trump have also come under fire for their participation in trophy hunting, which includes traveling to hunt and kill rare and sometimes endangered species.