Donald Trump Jr.

Donald John Trump Jr. was born on December 31, 1977, in Manhattan, New York City, to Ivana and Donald Trump. He has two younger siblings, Ivanka and Eric. He also has two half siblings, Tiffany, from his father's marriage to Marla Maples, and Barron, from his father's current marriage to Melania Trump. Through his father, Trump is a grandson of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod, and a great-grandson of Frederick Trump and Elizabeth Christ Trump, the latter of whom founded what became the Trump Organization. As a boy, Trump found a role model in his maternal grandfather, Miloš Zelníček, who had a home near Prague, where he spent summers camping, fishing, hunting and learning the Czech language.

His parents divorced when he was 12 years old due to his father having an extramarital affair. Trump Jr. was estranged from his father for one year after the divorce, furious at his actions which broke up the family.

Trump was educated at Buckley School and The Hill School, a college preparatory boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, followed by the University of Pennsylvania's (Penn) Wharton School, where he graduated in 2000 with a B.S. in Economics.

After graduating from Penn in 2000, Trump moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he hunted, fished, skied, lived in a truck, and worked as a bartender for a year, before returning to join the Trump Organization in New York. Trump has supervised building projects, which included 40 Wall Street, Trump International Hotel and Tower, and Trump Park Avenue, In 2006 he helped launch Trump Mortgage, which collapsed less than a year later. In 2010, he became a spokesperson and "executive director of global branding" for Cambridge Who's Who, a vanity publisher against whom hundreds of complaints had already been filed with the Better Business Bureau. He appeared as a guest adviser and judge on many episodes of his father's reality television show The Apprentice, from season 5 in 2006 to his father's last season in 2015.

Trump Organization

On January 11, 2017, Trump's father announced that he and his brother Eric would oversee a trust that included the Trump Organization's assets while his father was president, to avert a conflict of interest.

Amid the Trump–Ukraine scandal – where Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden – Trump Jr. strongly criticized Hunter Biden, accusing him of nepotism and leveraging his father as a means to get financial benefits. Trump Jr. said, "When you're the father and your son's entire career is dependent on that, they own you." Trump Jr. was widely ridiculed for these remarks by Trevor Noah and others. Trump Jr. is a high-level executive in his father's business and continued to operate and promote the family's businesses across the world during Trump's presidency. The Associated Press wrote of Trump Jr.'s, remarks that he was "showing no self-awareness that he, too, has at least in part been successful because of a famous father". According to The Washington Post fact-checker, Trump Jr.'s assertion that he and his family members had gotten out of foreign business deals after Trump became president is false. The Washington Post reported that after Trump became president, "Trump's sons have been busy selling assets to foreign individuals, expanding or adding onto their existing deals and investments in foreign countries, and collecting payments in U.S. properties from foreign governments."

In February 2018, advertisements in Indian newspapers promoted a deal whereby anyone who purchased Trump Organization apartments in Gurgaon before February 20 would be invited to have a "conversation and dinner" with Trump Jr. The ads were criticized by corruption watchdogs as unethical.

A ruling which was handed down on February 16, 2024 barred Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York, including the Trump Organization, for two years.

In November 2024, Trump announced that he would be joining 1789 Capital as a partner. In 2025, he announced that the firm would invest in the Enhanced Games, a proposed sports event that will allow performance enhancing drugs. He joined the advisory board of drone company Unusual Machines in November 2024.

In December 2024, it was announced that Trump was joining the board of directors of PublicSquare.

Family

In 2003, Trump Jr. began dating model Vanessa Kay Haydon at his father's suggestion. The couple married on November 12, 2005, at his father's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Haydon's grandfather was Danish jazz musician Kai Ewans. They have five children: daughter Kai Madison (b. May 2007), son Donald John III (b. February 2009), son Tristan Milos (b. October 2011), son Spencer Frederick (b. October 2012), and daughter Chloe Sophia (b. June 2014). The oldest daughter, Kai, is named after her maternal great-grandfather, Kai Ewans. Kai Trump was introduced by her father and spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention on July 17.

On March 15, 2018, media announced the couple had separated and Haydon had filed for an "uncontested" divorce in the Manhattan Supreme Court, despite later revelations that the divorce was, in fact, contested; court records only listed the title of the case, while details regarding the nature of the complaint were never made public. On February 22, 2019, Trump Jr. and Haydon announced they had settled their divorce at the end of 2018.

In 2018, Trump Jr. started dating Kimberly Guilfoyle, a long-time friend of the Trump family. The couple were said to have become engaged on December 31, 2020 (Trump Jr.'s 43rd birthday); however, news of the engagement was not made public until January 2022. Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle mutually ended their engagement sometime in 2024.

In December 2021, Trump Jr. changed his official residency from New York to Florida, 2 years after his father, Donald Trump, had done the same.

In December 2025, Trump Jr.'s engagement to socialite Bettina Anderson was announced. The couple legally married in West Palm Beach, Florida, on May 21, 2026, ahead of a private wedding celebration in the Bahamas on May 23, 2026.

2016 presidential campaign

Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Trump Jr. was a central member of his father's campaign, characterized by The New York Times as a "close political adviser". He spoke at the Republican National Convention, along with his siblings Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany.

Trump Jr. influenced his father's choice of Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke during the presidential transition. Since his father's victory in the 2016 election, Trump Jr. has developed what The Washington Post calls a "public persona as a right-wing provocateur and ardent defender of Trumpism". The Atlantic reported in 2019 that Trump had described Trump Jr. in 2017 as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer". Trump Jr. earned the nickname "Fredo" among some Trump campaign staffers, a reference to a character in The Godfather.

Trump Tower meeting

On June 9, 2016, Trump Jr. attended a meeting arranged by publicist Rob Goldstone on behalf of Azerbaijani-Russian businessman Emin Agalarov. The meeting was held in Trump Tower in Manhattan, among three members of the presidential campaign: Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort – and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, her translator Anatoli Samochornov, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, and Ike Kaveladze, a Georgian-American, U.S.-based senior vice president at Crocus Group, the real estate development company run by Aras Agalarov.

Approximately a year later, Trump Jr. initially told the media that adoption of Russian children was the main subject of the meeting. On July 8, 2017, Trump Jr. tweeted his email exchange with Goldstone. It revealed that Trump Jr. had agreed to attend the meeting with the understanding he would receive information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Goldstone also wrote in one of Trump Jr.'s publicly disclosed emails that the Russian government was involved. Robert Mueller, the special counsel of the Department of Justice in charge of Russia-related investigations, investigated the emails and the meeting. Although the White House lauded Trump Jr. for his transparency, he released the e-mails only after The New York Times had informed him that they had them and were going to publish a story about them.

In June 2019, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee made a criminal referral of Trump Jr. to federal prosecutors on suspicions that he misled the committee with his testimony.

Criminal investigation

On January 11, 2021, D.C. attorney general Karl Racine said that Donald Trump Jr. is a person of interest in the criminal investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and that he is looking at whether to charge him, along with Rudy Giuliani and Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.

On January 14, 2021, it became known that Trump Jr. is a person of interest in the criminal investigation into misuse of his father's inaugural funds in Washington D.C., and that prosecutors intend to interview him over his role in "grossly overpaying" for use of event space at the Trump Hotel in Washington for the 2017 inauguration. In May 2022, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine reached a $750,000 settlement with the inaugural committee without requiring an admission of wrongdoing.