Donald Trump Jr. is privately fuming over a college friend who has "destructive information" about the president's son, according to new reporting.
The conservative Wall Street Journal released a deep-dive report late on Saturday night on Gentry Beach, "a college friend of the president’s firstborn" who "has left a trail of confusion abroad" as he touts his connections to the First Family.
According to the Journal, Beach has been using Trump Jr.'s name in business dealings but stopping short of claiming to be representing the president's son. The result has been foreign officials looking into Beach and whether he is exaggerating the connections.
"The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo sat with a veteran U.S. diplomat recently in a hillside villa overlooking Kinshasa to resolve a question that had been troubling him. A Texas investor named Gentry Beach was regularly touring Central Africa, trying to purchase mining concessions as part of an 'economic diplomacy' campaign he credited to President Trump. Beach had let it be known he was friends with Donald Trump Jr., showing what senior Congolese officials described as text messages with the U.S. president’s eldest son, and their photos together. Did he speak for the Trump administration?" the report states. "Thousands of miles away, Pakistan’s government had been asking the same question. Beach—a groomsman at Trump Jr.’s 2005 wedding—had traveled to Islamabad to meet with the prime minister, promising to invest billions of dollars mining critical minerals and building what he told reporters would be 'some of the most high-end luxury properties that have ever existed' in the South Asian country. 'I’ve been very close with the Trump administration for a long time,' he added."
The globetrotting name-dropper isn't just ruffling international feathers. The president's son is reportedly privately frustrated, and has even sent a cease and desist letter.
"Trump Jr., who declined to comment, has privately told people he is frustrated with his old friend. While abroad, Trump Jr. has found himself fending off foreign officials who told him they had heard from Beach that the president’s son was interested in doing business in their countries, according to people familiar with Trump Jr.’s travels. Trump Jr. rejected the inquiries and said he wasn’t doing business with Beach," according to the report. "In August, Trump Jr.’s lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Beach to stop representing himself as a business partner of Trump Jr. Beach denied ever receiving or seeing the letter."
The Journal takes care to note that "Trump Jr. has never publicly distanced himself from Beach," before quoting Beach as saying he had "destructive" information about his friend from college.
"Over the course of nearly four hours of interviews, Beach spoke at length about his relationship with the president’s son. Asked how the two of them met, Beach smiled: 'Don has laughingly said many times that we’ve known each other so long, any information we have is mutually destructive,' he said," the report states. "'He knows that I’ll always be a loyal friend.'"