White tiger and cheetah furs: A mess of Trump gift exchanges
The Saudi royal family showered Donald Trump and his entourage on his first trip abroad as president with dozens of presents, including three robes made with white tiger and cheetah fur, and a dagger with a handle that appeared to be ivory.
Little that followed went right.
A White House lawyer determined that possession of the furs and dagger most likely violated the Endangered Species Act, but the Trump administration held onto them and failed to disclose them as gifts received from a foreign government.
On the last full day of Trump’s presidency, the White House handed them over to the General Services Administration — the wrong agency — rather than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which seized the gifts this summer.
At that point, there was a surprise.
The furs, from an oil-rich family worth billions of dollars, were fake.
“Wildlife inspectors and special agents determined the linings of the robes were dyed to mimic tiger and cheetah patterns and were not comprised of protected species,” said Tyler Cherry, a spokesperson for the Interior Department, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
The tale of the furs is but one example of how gift exchanges between the United States and foreign leaders — a highly regulated process intended to shield administrations from questions of impropriety — devolved into sometimes risible shambles during the Trump administration.
The State Department’s inspector general is investigating allegations that Trump’s political appointees walked off with gift bags worth thousands of dollars that were meant for foreign leaders at the Group of 7 summit planned for Camp David in Maryland in 2020, which was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The bags contained dozens of items purchased with government funds, including leather portfolios, pewter trays and marble trinket boxes emblazoned with the presidential seal or the signatures of Trump and his wife, Melania.
The inspector general continues to pursue the whereabouts of a $5,800 bottle of Japanese whiskey given to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — Pompeo said he never received it — and a 22-karat gold coin given to another State Department official.
There is also a question about whether former second lady Karen Pence wrongly took two goldtoned place-card holders from the prime minister of Singapore without paying for them.
In addition, the Trump administration never disclosed that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, received two swords and a dagger from the Saudis, although he paid $47,920 for them along with three other gifts in February, after he left office.
To be sure, Trump’s handling of foreign gifts is not at the top of his critics’ list of administration offenses. And there is no evidence that he or Melania took any gifts to which they were not entitled.
But ethics experts said the problems reflected larger issues with the Trump presidency.
“Whether this was indifference, sloppiness or the Great Train Robbery, it shows such a cavalier attitude to the law and the regular process of government,” said Stanley Brand, a criminal defense lawyer, ethics expert and former top lawyer for the House of Representatives.
The details about the missing gifts and the other widespread problems with them have not been previously reported. Politico reported in August that the State Department’s inspector general was investigating about 20 types of missing gifts.
The nation’s founders were so concerned that European nobility could coopt U.S. officials with lavish gifts that they included in the Constitution a clause making it illegal for an official to take anything of worth from a foreigner.
In 1966, Congress passed a law detailing how a U.S. official could keep a gift of only relatively minimal value, now capped at $415. Subsequent amendments defined gifts as government property and created a standardized process for how officials were to deal with them.
To add transparency, provisions require administrations to annually disclose the gifts given to U.S. officials by foreigners and their appraised value.
The laws have no criminal penalties, although legal experts said that anyone caught taking government property could be prosecuted for theft.
The State Department disclosed a list of 82 gifts from the Saudis to Trump administration officials on the May 2017 trip in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed shortly after Trump returned home.