Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump purchased a minority interest in a construction company that is now connected to a U.S. government-backed tungsten mining deal in Kazakhstan, according to Fox News.
The investment was made in August 2025, through an investment vehicle created by Dominari Securities, which is located in Trump Tower in New York. The brothers bought into Skyline Builders, a company that at the time was publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker SKBL.
Skyline Builders is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ASP Isotopes, a company owned by businessman Paul Mann. In June 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm founded by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, underwrote a $46.8 million loan to ASP Isotopes. Lutnick's firm is now run by his sons, Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, after their father became a government official.
The central deal under scrutiny involves tungsten mining in Kazakhstan. A U.S.-based investment company, Cove Capital, and its affiliate Cove Kaz Capital Group, negotiated with the Kazakh government between 2023 and 2024 to acquire a 70% share in Kazakhstan's state-owned tungsten deposits. Tungsten is used in military equipment including missiles and fighter jets. China and Russia control the majority of the world's supply.
On November 6, 2025, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met with Trump and announced that Kazakhstan had awarded the tungsten mining contract to the United States. The Export-Import Bank of the United States and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation issued letters of interest totaling up to $1.6 billion in financing for the project.
Critics have raised questions about whether the Trump brothers' investment creates a conflict of interest given the president's role in securing the deal. However, securities attorney Andrew Stoltmann, based in Chicago, told Fox News Digital that proving any wrongdoing would be extremely difficult.
"Well, the question is whether President Trump would have known about his sons' investments in this company, and I think the answer would be 'no' unless the sons told them," Stoltmann said.
"Look, they are private investors," he continued. "They are not government employees. So, to the extent they make a passive investment in a company or an entity, there are no real duties to disclose this information."
Stoltmann acknowledged that critics face what he called a "proof problem" when it comes to establishing any direct link between the president's policy decisions and his sons' private investments.
