Don Jr. met with Indian billionaire before his DOJ charges were dropped

Before President Donald Trump's administration dropped charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, he had a meeting with the president's son, Donald Trump Jr.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday morning that when Trump Jr. was in India last November for "a wedding and a wildlife sanctuary tour," he met with the billionaire about a year after the Justice Department "accused the 63-year-old Adani Group chairman and his nephew Sagar Adani of orchestrating an alleged bribery scheme in India." They continue to deny the charges and the DOJ moved to drop them last month.

The conversation between the two was private. Don Jr. has been occasionally helping his brother run the Trump Organization, but a spokesperson for him maintains, “Don had zero to do with DOJ’s actions in this case."

Adani's indictment came shortly after the 2024 election.

"The case, which accused Adani and others of a scheme to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to lock in solar energy contracts, immediately drew some criticism as an overreach. The Justice Department claimed the Adanis had lied about the alleged scheme when their renewable energy business raised capital from US-based investors and international institutions through dollar bonds and loans," reported Bloomberg.

In response to the charges, Adani hired a team of lawyers and lobbyists to help him kill the case. His two sons were also helping with the effort. His son Jeet is leading the operation, according to those familiar. He met with Don Jr. at Mar-a-Lago last year, though a person familiar with the meeting said the two didn't discuss the case against Adani's father.

Trump's immigration policies made it difficult for Adani to enter the United States for business purposes. He'd previously pledged to invest $10 billion in the United States after Trump was elected.

"Earlier this year, Adani’s lawyers shifted gears and moved aggressively to get the criminal case dropped. They also sought to resolve a parallel Securities and Exchange Commission civil fraud case and a separate probe by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control into whether an Adani unit violated Iran sanctions," the report explained.

Adani hired the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, whose co-chair, Robert Giuffra Jr., is working as one of Trump's personal attorneys. It delivered them a direct line to the president. The legal team argued that the suit was absurd and had no credible evidence. It also included a slide in the presentation showcasing the $10 billion investment in the U.S.

By May, the DOJ dropped the case, and the SEC agreed to an $18 million settlement with Adani. "The conglomerate’s flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. also reached a deal to resolve OFAC’s sanctions probe for $275 million without an admission of wrongdoing," the report added.

While in court last month, prosecutors said that they simply decided “not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants." They never said directly what prompted them to drop it.