The protests against Serbian President Alexander Vicz had grown in strength and scale when a rare guest this month appeared in the capital this month to meet President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Trump’s quick visit included a meeting with Vicz to talk about US foreign aid to Serbia, and the Trump family and son-in-law Jared Kushner were moving forward with plans to build the Trump International Hotel in Belgrade, Europe’s first such property.
The hotel is scheduled to be built on the site of the former Yugoslav National Defense Headquarters, which was bombed by NATO on land owned by the Serbian government 26 years ago. Serbian opposition leaders criticized the agreement and urged it to be terminated, increasing the prospect that the deal could fall into a change of power.
Trump used the visit as an opportunity to express his support for Vucic, the trip that provided the clearest mix of President Trump’s US foreign policy and Trump tribe’s financial interests to date.
On Wednesday, the Serbian parliament accepted the prime minister’s resignation, overthrowing the governing party and forced Vucic to form a new government or hold a new parliamentary election later this year, adding to the uncertainty there.
A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. has rejected the proposal that his visit had created a conflict of interest. A spokesperson said the trip was driven by plans to interview Vucic for Trump’s podcast.
“Don hosts one of the world’s largest political podcasts and Serbia was strictly in his ability as a podcast host for interviews,” spokesman Andy Slavian said. “He was in and out of the country within eight hours and had no discussion with anyone associated with the Trump organization.”
The visit was arranged by President Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Perscale, according to two individuals who were briefed on the plan.
Perscale, a conservative podcast and radio broadcasting company executive, also founded a political campaign consulting firm. He advised Mr Vicz during the 2022 reelection campaign but claimed he was not hired.
Vucic is currently facing one of the biggest tests in nearly eight years as president. His protests against the administration broke out in November after the concrete structure collapsed over the aisle of the railway station that killed 15.
Last week’s visit to Trump brought a brief pause to these troubles and quickly made national news in Serbia. Vicz and his top advisors pointed it to him as a sign that the Trump administration supports Vicz despite growing protests on the streets of the capital.
“A heartfelt conversation with Donald Trump Jr., the son of President Donald Trump, on bilateral relations between Serbia and the US and the current topics shaping the global political and economic scene.”
Serbian Foreign Minister Marco Julik added in a television interview after Trump’s visit that the presence of President Trump’s son “provides great momentum for a good start from his relationship with the new administration.”
Others in the country had a completely different view.
“President Trump’s son is here to give Vucic a helping hand,” said Dragan Jonik, an opposition member of Serbian Parliament. “It’s clearly a conflict of interest because Vucic is trying to take power and Trump wants to keep their real estate deal alive.”
Vucic’s government signed an agreement last May with Affinity Global Development, the company that Kushner founded. The company plans to invest $500 million in the former Ministry of Defense in Belgrade to build a 175-room Trump hotel with 1,500 luxury apartments and other amenities.
Another of Trump’s sons, Eric Trump, said in January when the project was first announced that the Trump International Hotel would be included in its project, “We are thrilled to be able to expand our presence in Europe.” Eric Trump is the head family running a real estate company.
However, Donald Trump Jr. is also the executive vice president of the Trump organization, which operates family hotels, golf courses and other assets, helping to plan a hotel project in Serbia.
He was briefed on Donald Trump Jr.’s trip, but the two individuals who spoke on condition of anonymity said they were not authorized to discuss it publicly and therefore went on a trip. However, his airfares, and his girlfriend, Bettina Anderson, were covered by Mr. Perscale, who has a Serbia-based business partner. Mr. Perscale refused to comment or disclose the names of his Serbian business partners.
Virginia Kanter, a former ethics advisor to the International Monetary Fund, said the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and the Serbian president was reminiscent of the work of Hunter Biden, who was accused of using the position of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is in charge of vice president.
“It’s like high hypocrisy that he was worried about Hunter Biden’s foreign work,” he said, as an ethics lawyer at the Clinton White House, and now works for a nonprofit called the Advocate of State Democracy, a critical part of Trump.
In Canter’s view, the conflict of interest over the Donald Trump Jr. incident is even clearer.
“Don Jr. uses the US president’s office on behalf of his father to help the Serbian president take office. “It’s unethical. It’s offensive.”
It remains unclear to what extent Trump’s presence in Serbia helped Vucic.
A few days after the visit, the central Belgrade city was packed with over 100,000 demonstrators for what organizers called it one of the biggest protests in the country’s history.
Mr. Vitic’s government offered the Trump family a contract last year to run for reelection and access a major real estate development site in central Belgrade.
Serbian officials say the government has leased the site to Kushner’s real estate partnership for 99 years. Kushner’s affiliate Affinity Global Development has agreed to build a hotel and luxury apartment in partnership with UAE business executive Mohamed Arabar.
Donald J. Trump was first elected president and when he was still running a family real estate business, he first considered building a hotel on this exact site in 2013, and fellow Trump organizations traveled to Belgrade to inspect the location. The project wasn’t brought together before Trump’s election in 2016, but Kushner revived it last year while Trump was re-inaugurated.
The hotel project had generated small protests in Belgrade even before the fatal railway station canopy collapsed late last year.
Opposition leaders like Jonick claimed that the former Ministry of Defense site was symbolic as Serbia and its neighbor Montenegro were attacked in 1999 by US-led NATO forces in 1999, when Serbia and its neighbor Montenegro were part of Yugoslavia. Opposition leaders said they should not be handed over to American real estate developers in search of profits.
“Can you imagine the US president, the president giving West Point as a gift to an offshore company just to destroy it and build a hotel?” Serbian parliament member Alexander Djovanovic said last year that the deal was being negotiated with reference to the US military academy.
“To imagine that, you need to have a vivid imagination. Unfortunately, what you can’t think of in America is a tragic reality in Serbia,” he said at that point.
In addition to showing the Serbian president’s layout for downtown Belgrade, Donald Trump Jr. conducted an almost hour-long interview with Vucic, which aired on Trump’s recent podcast, “Trigger.”
In the conversation, Trump compared protests in response to the collapse of railway stations in November, attacking an attack by his father’s supporters at the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.
“It was later weaponized,” Trump said during an interview before continuing theories raised by Trump’s allies related to the events in Washington, “January 6th will turn into something that isn’t like us, potentially even incite a revolution.”
Trump and Vicz also spoke about the war in Russia and Ukraine, and Vitic’s work with President Trump during his first term.
They both individually argued that funding from the US International Development Agency, which the Trump administration cut over the past two months, was inappropriately used by some nonprofits in Serbia to serve as a protest.
The obvious support for Trump family’s Vicz has been highly appreciated, and the Serbian president has made it clear, adding that it is part of the reason why President Trump is so popular in Serbia.
“This was the country where Trump enjoyed far the biggest popularity across Europe,” Wüch said. “I’m not flattering him or I’m not flattering you. I’m saying what the people here are thinking.”
Andrew Higgins contributed the report.
