Despite a promise that the Trump Organization would make “no new foreign deals” during President-elect Donald Trump’s time in the White House, a Trump-owned Scottish golf course is currently making plans for a massive expansion, the Guardian reported on Saturday.
According to the report, expansion plans for Trump International Golf Course Scotland in Aberdeenshire will likely include a new 18-hole golf course and an expansion on the resort’s hotel. Possible additional expansions include a new 450-bed hotel and luxury housing.
Trump’s executives in Scotland have argued that the expansion plans predated his November 9 election victory, the Guardian reported, and thus do not violate the pledge.
“Implementing future phasing of existing properties does not constitute a new transaction so we intend to proceed,” a Trump Organization spokeswoman told the Guardian.
The expansion plans are partially based on the resort’s 2008 master plan, the Guardian reported. The Aberdeenshire council granted Trump permission to expand the resort’s boutique hotel on Nov. 2, 2016, but rejected in December plans submitted last year for hundreds of homes and “leisure accommodation units”–which would come after the new 450-bed hotel–saying the Trump Organization would first need to build affordable housing, a new primary school, and other projects in the area. The council is currently processing plans for the second golf course, the application for which having been submitted in September 2015, the Guardian reported.
Trump’s assets—including his 100 percent stake in his Aberdeenshire resort—have been temporarily placed in a trust controlled by his sons during his presidency, as announced by a legal “white paper” released by the Trump team last week.
Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007 and a vocal critic of Trump’s business conflicts of interest, told the Guardian that the language presented by his legal team about “new” foreign deals “is subject to such wide range of interpretation that it can easily be worked around.”
“This is meaningless language, because what is the definition of a new deal?” he said. “When you’re a real estate developer, you are constantly entering into new contracts, expanding existing facilities, refinancing leases.”
