Plans by former US president Donald Trump to visit his family’s West Clare golf resort later this month have been scrapped.
It had been expected that he would arrive in Ireland on August 27th and stay at his family-owned Doonbeg hotel for two nights when security was expected to be tight. There was no indication whether any family members would make the trip with him.
According to sources this morning, the proposed visit to Doonbeg by Mr Trump has been shelved.
This afternoon, a spokesperson for Trump International Golf Links and Hotel confirmed: “The visit is not going ahead.”
There is no information on whether the visit will take place at another time
The embattled former US president last visited his property in Doonbeg during an official visit to Ireland in 2019. Before that, he travelled to Clare on several occasions in a private capacity. His last private trip was in June 2015 when he also stayed at the Trump property in Doonbeg.
Additional security arrangements were expected to be put in place here with members of An Garda Síochána’s National Crime and Security Intelligence Service and Emergency Response Unit likely to have been deployed.
The visit had originally been thrown into doubt after passports belonging to Mr Trump were seized in last week’s FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
In a statement on the Truth Social platform, Trump claimed that agents “stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else.”
The FBI confirmed on the same day that agents had taken the passports during the search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8th last. The US Justice Department has since confirmed that Mr Trump’s passports have been returned to him.
Mr Trump is currently under the spotlight for his actions during the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington. Trump has been accused ‘supreme dereliction of duty’ and of inciting those riots.
He is also being investigated for allegedly removing potentially sensitive or even highly classified documents when he vacated the White House.