There has always been a “fierce wind” blowing in and around Trump’s Scottish golf courses. The biggest and most problematic involves the financing of the project, given that from the very first announcement Trump didn’t have the money and used Deutsche Bank to issue a lot of loans that make absolutely no sense without further background or explanation. That was bad enough, but in building the white elephants, Trump managed to be Trump, raw and uncut, in dealing with the locals. He went in not only like he owned the land for the courses but owned all the land within twenty miles, including offshore. Oh, and like he owned the government. Last, the courses consistently lose massive amounts of money. We mean massive amounts of money.

So the Scotland project has always been a problem. The Scots, not being oblivious to reality, always knew that Trump actually didn’t have the financial ability to fund the entire project and always had their nose up to the wind (there’s a lot of wind on the coast in Scotland) and smelled rank criminality coming from Russia.

The Scots have been investigating for some time. Of course, a foreign country would have just as tough time indicting or even announcing the indictment of the U.S. president as our country. But now the Scots appear ready to go as Trump’s tenure ends. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says Trump will face “due accountability” in Scotland if the evidence emerges that he used the courses for fraud and money laundering. From Reddit, quoting the Sunday Times:

Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Green party leader, today repeated claims first aired in the Scottish parliament in February that Trump Turnberry and Trump Aberdeen have been linked to “money laundering” …. Mr Harvie said today: “We need to protect Scotland’s good name from association with the toxic Trump brand . . . US evidence in congress has cited patterns of buying and selling that suggested money laundering, in particular in relation to the golf course in Scotland and Ireland.

Yeah. And if you think the First Minister feels like handing out favors to a former U.S. president she would like to disabuse you of the thought:

She told Mr Harvie: “Everybody is probably well aware of my views of the soon to be former president of the United States . . . so the idea that I would somehow seek to protect him from due accountability in Scotland I don’t think holds much water.

Fascinating that this news comes out today, as it becomes clearer that Trump has no hope of winning the election and Boris Johnson has called “President-Elect Biden to congratulate him. It is an interesting enough question whether this country would imprison a former president, it’s an even more interesting question to ask whether a foreign country could extradite a former president to jail him.

Oh, you wanted to know what Eric had to say? Sure:

 When he first made the claims Eric Trump, the president’s son and director of his Scottish businesses, responded by describing them as “disgusting statements, made without any supporting evidence and having absolutely no basis in fact”.

We will not miss these people.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak