The Trump administration has been “secretly plotting” to give away a portion of America's public land in Yosemite National Park to a private developer with ties to Trump cronies. The developer wants to build a road into the park and develop two 40-acre parcels near the park, according to The New York Times.
The road “would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests,” NOTUS said.
In other words, the road would almost certainly give a tremendous boost to the value of the developer’s real estate, at the expense of the public. The developer is supposed to buy and donate back to the government some other piece of land for public use. I think it's a safe bet it will be nowhere as valuable or meaningful as the piece of historic Yosemite being taken away.
The portion of Yosemite Trump wants to give away “is near one of its most iconic sights, the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, which President Abraham Lincoln signed a grant to protect during the American Civil War,” The Daily Beast noted.
NOTUS, which broke the story, describes the developer as “a web of limited-liability companies” operated by a real-estate developer and investment firm called Kingsbarn Realty Capital.
In its announcement about the deal, Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori thanked Newmark Group, formerly chaired by toady extraordinaire, Epstein pal and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Hankey Capital, which underwrote Trump’s $175 million bond in his appeal of the fraud judgment in New York, NOTUS pointed out. Pori is a Trump donor, of course.
National Park Service staff are being pressured to carry out this giveaway of public land for private development. “Staff are required to send regular updates on their progress to political appointees inside [Interior Secretary] Burgum’s office, and they are occasionally berated by political staff for not moving fast enough, according to two people familiar with the process,” NOTUS further reported.
NOTUS also pointed out that this development (pun intended) is a reversal of 150 years of precedent in which the federal government has worked to expand our “crown-jewel national parks,” not give up land. It also reverses a pledge Burgum made in his confirmation hearing to “support and protect every inch” of national parks. And just a few days ago, Donald Trump declared, “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”
The big question is, what did President Corrupt Billionaire get in return for giving away such precious public land, ostensibly for someone else's private gain?
I hope somebody is looking into it.
