Track II Envoy to Authoritarians

The Trump Family’s Self-Dealing

News of Don Jr’s trip to Serbia got buried by all the typical sturm und drang of Trump. Still, it bears highlighting because the Trump Associates’ choice of Balkan partners is a lesson about our changing national character.   

Junior’s trip was to tell pro-democracy protestors to pipe down and stop being so mean to Serbia’s strongman president Aleksandar Vučić. He interviewed Vučić, during which he said the protests were “weaponized” to incite a revolution. He also echoed the canard that USAID funds interference in Serb politics. Richard Grenell, the U.S. Special Envoy for Special Missions and former Kushner advisor, also addressed the protests and drew rebukes from three leaders of the Serbian opposition. 

The Trump Family and its Balkan Pay-to-Play Pipeline

Before we start, let’s review the Trump family’s Serb sales cycle. Hand it to the Trumps. They’ve been at this a very long time. Tl;dr America’s new Global Kleptocracy Network isn’t all that new. Among other things, the timeline below demonstrates how long the US government has been out of the enforcement game, creating a permissive environment for the emergence of Trump. 

The Rudy Years

2012: Rudy Giuliani consulted for Aleksandar Vučić, Slobodan Milosevic’s minister of information, during his campaign for Mayor of Belgrade. 

2016: A billboard in Belgrade featured Rudy Giuliani alongside Aleksandar Vučić, then the Deputy Leader of the Serbian Progressive Party. 

Diplomacy Kayfabe as Business Development

September 2020: President Trump hosted Serbian President Vučić and Kosovan Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti at the White House to sign economic normalization agreements between Serbia and Kosovo. Richard Grenell, the US Special Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo negotiations at the time, played a central role in brokering these agreements.

It Gets Interesting

Late 2020: The US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), under the leadership of Adam Boehler, announced the opening of its first permanent overseas office in Belgrade. There, the DFC also explored potential investments in the former Yugoslav army building in Belgrade. Boehler held a press conference in Belgrade with Vučić. Here, we need to stop to explain three things. First, according to Politico, Boehler was Kushner’s college roommate. Second, the selection of this former army barracks has been highly controversial. It remains a symbol in Serbia of the NATO bombing of Belgrade decades ago, which, as you may imagine, remains politically contentious. Third, these army barracks will be the site of Jared Kushner’s luxury development in Belgrade, which, by the way, will be leasing its name, Trump Tower, from The Trump Organization. One of the reasons Don Jr flew to Serbia was to discuss this project. Now, it has become a source of protests. 

2021: Jared Kushner established his Miami investment firm, Affinity Partners. Affinity Partners received significant financial backing, including a reported $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and, more recently, $1.5 billion from Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

2023: Reports emerged of a meeting between Vučić and Kushner in Davos, Switzerland, because of course. 

March–May 2024: The Serbian government, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, and Arab investors reportedly finalized and signed the agreement for Trump Tower Belgrade. The agreement reportedly grants a 99-year lease to Affinity Global Development at no charge, with the Serbian government set to receive a slice of the profits. 

November 2024: Student-led protests against the corruption and mismanagement of the Vučić administration began in Serbia after the collapse of a train station built by Chinese contractors that killed 15 people in Novi Sad. 

January 2025: Official Announcement

March 2025: Protests gained momentum, spreading nationwide. Trump Jr. visited Serbia and met with President Vučić. While there, he conducted a podcast interview with Vučić on his "Triggered" podcast. During the interview, Trump Jr. amplified Vučić's claims of foreign interference by USAID in Serbian politics and the protests (despite the fact that USAID had already been cut down to the roots by DOGE at that point). Crowds directly protested the Kushner venture. Yes, Don Jr. performed so poorly at his primary mission, that he helped destabilize the government, but that’s not the point. Instead, at a time when an authoritarian, pro-Russian government faces a population in a boiling rage about corruption, the US is not telegraphing messages about freedom or democracy but instead is trying to save the president’s business prospects. 

Occam’s Razor: Less de Tocqueville; more WWE

It seems that members of the Trump family love to imagine themselves as genius businessmen. In reality, collecting contracts and sales is easy when your family runs the US government as a marketing department for your private company. Some people might call that collecting bribes. A popular narrative holds that Trump admires strongmen because he wants to be one in the Orban mold. I’m not going to dispute that because maybe that’s true. But notice the throughline for all of his dealings with authoritarians: money. In times past, authoritarians feared the American moral high-ground – however fleeting or even hypocritical it might be in a given moment – because of the populist leverage that that gave us. Putin hates color revolutions because he knows they could lead to him ending up like Ghaddafi. Yet, over the past 20 years, we have forfeited that high ground and have now landed in a place where authoritarians can buy us off by helping the president’s son-in-law build a Trump tower in a building that we once bombed to stop ethnic cleansing. 

The philosophical way to view this would be that Trump is mortgaging centuries of US history, the rule of law, and transparency, and cashing it in for his benefit. And I would argue that that’s all true, but who among us thinks that thought process flows through Trump’s head? 

De Tocqueville made sophisticated points about the American experiment and how the rule of law restrains authoritarians from lashing out at political opponents. Translated for our current timeline: The rule of law prevents tinpot strongmen from bribing the nominally strongest country on earth by helping them build a resort in Serbia. All that 19th-century political philosophy still holds, but saving the American experiment is going to require some translating.

Authoritarianism and Corruption Go Hand in Hand

At Dekleptocracy Alliance, we often make the point that “authoritarianism” and “corruption” are intertwined. The rule of law constrains authoritarians, and they, in turn, need to undermine this system to consolidate their rule. Plus, authoritarians usually want power to steal stuff in the first place.   

Sure, market economies need the rule of law to serve as a stable foundation, but they also need the rule of law to prevent the ruler’s son-in-law from using government resources for business development. 

Don Jr. may have authoritarian sympathies for Aleksandar Vučić, but their “families” also appear to have a lot of current and potential business on the table. Did Don Jr. go to Serbia to pontificate on the nuances of Balkan geopolitics, or was he expanding Jared Kushner’s backdoor access to deals in Serbia? 

The Anti-Reagan

Looking at the Serbian engagement, it is very hard for us to look like a "shining city upon a hill" rather than just another geopolitical bully. We are supporting a level of corruption that threatens the stability of the Serb government, one of Putin’s most stalwart allies. And we are so maladroit at wielding our national leverage that we haven’t exploited a ripe situation to encourage the country to turn back toward democracy and the rule of law. 

Instead of exporting democracy, we're increasingly exporting corruption. Instead of upholding the rules-based order, we're undermining it. Instead of being a model for the world, we're a cautionary tale.

The remarkable thing is how Don Jr.’s Serbia jaunt just flew under the radar as if it were the new normal. My erstwhile former allies in the GOP write this all off as Trump being Trump. And fair enough. But that’s not the point. That they’re ignoring it is. The business community also ignores it. Whether it’s fear or indifference, I don’t know.  America has traded in our moral authority for a quick buck, and nobody wants to do anything about it beyond grumbling on social media. No wonder all of the Silicon Valley barons support Trump. 

What is to Be Done?

I mentioned in our first post that this Substack will not be one where we just complain about Washington and urge the Democrats to do something. We’re committed to giving you options for acting. That’s part of our mission. 

First, New York certainly has recourse. I realize we bang this drum often, but that’s because the pro-democracy coalition has jurisdiction and tools available to it, and they are going unused. Affinity Partners is registered in Miami, Florida, but it seems inconceivable that Affinity hasn’t solicited funding from New York-based investors and used NY financial infrastructure in the process. It certainly has had no problem raising money with filings showing $1.5 billion injected last year by Abu Dhabi-based Lunate and the Qatar Investment Authority.. These firms rely on New York for their US activity. Again, we point out that New York Attorney General Letitia James and the New York State Department of Financial Services have jurisdiction to investigate fraud and any number of issues raised by our ruling family’s Balkan and other ventures. 

I find it hard to believe that New York would not have laws that govern how capital institutions regulated by New York are able to trade favors with foreign governments, as this appears to do. New York’s Martin Act, one of the country’s most potent state-level regulatory frameworks, gives New York authorities the power to investigate acts of fraud, whether there was intent or not. When New York went after AIG’s global fraud, they used the Martin Act. 

Second, other states also likely have recourse by dint of the fact that Affinity Partners' other investors also invest in those states. Along with the other Gulf investors, Saudi’s PIF is invested in California, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and others. States can regulate who and how someone invests there. And, if these states don’t like how a major investor behaves elsewhere in the world, well, they have recourse. Affinity Partners is rumored to have other sovereign wealth fund participants, too. Sovereign wealth funds will be a topic of a future post by itself. 

Third, while I haven’t looked at the Kushner’s vast holdings, they have probably spread their wealth all over the country. Every state where they have investments has jurisdiction. They are beholden to those states, not the other way around. 

Go, Go, Go

I’m not naive enough to think that these steps are easy. They aren’t and, at a minimum, will likely trigger court fights (though ambitious DAs should welcome those). But importantly, our capital markets all too often seem to be in a race to the bottom when it comes to capital controls, transparency regulations and enforcement actions. Everyone is afraid of scaring off investment capital. 

Well, guess what? What we’re seeing is the natural endpoint of that. In his current form, Elon Musk is the result of the fear to regulate investment capital. People clearly don’t like Elon Musk and all the other oligarchs trampling all over the Constitution and the rule of law. Many state and local politicians have the power to reign this freight train in but refuse to act (and it’s gaining steam, so it’s going to get worse). Maybe they don’t know? Maybe they’re afraid of scaring off investment capital? Maybe what I’m suggesting goes against norms?

We need to ask ourselves what scares off more capital: regulations or the lack of regulatory enforcement; letting Jared and authoritarians run wild or using the rule of law to contain them? I’d submit that containing someone like Elon Musk would probably attract capital. Investment capital likes a stable, rules-based order. State AGs that value the rule of law should coordinate among themselves and create the “Elon Challenge.” See who can attract the most investment. Do well by doing good, as they say.  

Norms are crumbling; oligarchs feel unconstrained and are working on becoming even more powerful oligarchs. Taking Russia as a guide, if the rule of law doesn’t rein them in, a strongman will. Let’s act while the tools available to us still have the ability to affect things.