DONALD Trump could still be on his way to Ayr this weekend after the FBI handed back his passport.
According to reports, the former US President is due to visit his golf clubs in Turnberry and Aberdeenshire for the first time in four years.
However, the trip looked in doubt after federal investigators confiscated a number of documents, including the passports during a raid of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home.
The US Justice Department is looking into possible violations of the Espionage Act, with allegations that Mr Trump kept material marked as classified in his golf resort after leaving the White House.
The FBI removed 11 sets of documents, some relating to nuclear weapons and some marked “top secret”.
The New York Times reports that Mr Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, did not collect, box and deliver materials to the National Archives as they are supposed to have done, and as previous presidents have done.
Instead, the paper’s sources said, they “focused on settling political grievances and personal grudges.”
Writing on his Truth Social platform after the search, Mr Trump said: “Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else.
"This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”
US media reports that the passports were handed back to Mr Trump's lawyers on Monday.
Although next week's visit has not been confirmed, currently, the course in Aberdeenshire has no tee times available on its website for the 22, while Trump Turnberry has no tee times available on 23, 25, 26 or 27 August.
Colin Smyth, Labour MSP for South Scotland, said: “I think people would prefer if he just stayed away from Scotland altogether.
“Trump has been an absentee owner since he bought Turnberry and with huge losses year on year, the Trump Organisation has been as big a failure at running the resort as Trump was as President.
“But that’s not an excuse for landing the taxpayer with any bills for a visit. He should be picking up the bill for these trips.”
Sarah Malone, executive vice-president of Trump International Scotland defended her boss. She said: “Not only has President Trump served the American people in the highest office, he is also a huge investor into the Scottish leisure and tourism economy, attracting significant tourist money to Scotland.”
Mr Trump’s last visit to his Ayrshire course was in 2018 during a state visit to the UK where he met with the then Prime Minister Theresa May and the Queen.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel