Barron Trump’s new drinks business is registered to the address of one of President Donald Trump’s friends and donors, Newsweek can reveal.
The president’s youngest son and four other individuals have been named as directors of a business called Sollos Yerba Mate Inc., a yerba mate (caffeinated herbal tea) beverage company that is set to launch in April, according to business registration documents filed in Florida and Delaware in January and Newsweek discovered in February.
Now, Newsweek has also found that the $16 million five-bedroom house in Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, that the business is registered to, is owned by Jay Weitzman, according to records provided to Newsweek by the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office. Weitzman, a businessman, is a long-time friend of Trump who has previously donated to the president and whose parking business receives federal contracts. The records showed this was the business’s principal address.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing. Weitzman denied any involvement or investment in the business. Weitzman told Newsweek that his grandson is one of the directors of the business and is living with him. He said that was why the business was registered at his address. Newsweek reached out to the White House by email to comment on this story.
Sollos Yerba Mate told Newsweek: “Jay Weitzman is Spencer Bernstein’s grandfather and Spencer currently lives at his house. Jay has zero association with the business.” Bernstein is one of the company’s directors.
Brian Cheffins, a professor of corporate law at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., told Newsweek: “Since the business seemed likely to attract publicity, it is kind of surprising a registered agent service was not used. Still, since the grandson and other directors of Sollos did not opt to do this and needed to use an address with a physical location for the registered address, the place the grandson is living is a logical enough choice.”
Nevertheless, as his term continues, the business activities of Donald Trump’s closest family members draw scrutiny partly because of questions of potential political influence and ethics experts questioned the arrangement.
Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund and a former ethics counsel, told Newsweek that Barron Trump’s business “opens yet another potential avenue of seeking to influence the President through his family’s assorted business schemes.”
Weitzman donated $25,000 to pay for Trump’s first inauguration. Weitzman confirmed he had donated to Trump in the past and told Newsweek his donation made him Trump’s seventh-biggest donor from Pennsylvania. Filings with the Federal Election Commission also show he donated $2,700 to Trump’s presidential campaign in August 2016.
As well as the business being registered to Weitzman’s Florida address, trademarks associated with the business and filed to the United States Patent and Trademark Office are also registered to this address.
Meanwhile, Weitzman’s parking business, Park America, has been a recipient of federal contracts since 2005, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. These are for numerous agencies, including the U.S. Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security, and business has been continuous and has not notably increased under the Trump administration.
There is no suggestion that these contracts came through Weitzman’s relationship with Trump. Weitzman said his business managed the parking spaces of office buildings that government agencies and other companies rent and that he had not realized this meant he had contracts with the government agencies themselves. He said he received a flat management fee from building owners through these contracts.
“All the money collected goes back to building ownership after a set management fee minus budgeted actual expenses,” he said. “We do not receive a percentage of any money these government agencies pay.”
The Trump family members are “all really wonderful people as far as people go,” Weitzman told Newsweek.
“He’s been very, very nice to me and my family,” he said, adding that he went to school with Donald Trump and played tennis with him.
“Neither I nor any of my family has ever made money from whatever relationship we have had with the President,” he said. He said he did not know if Donald Trump was helping Barron Trump with the business.
Barron Trump’s business, Sollos Yerba Mate Inc., was incorporated in Delaware on December 3, 2025, a business-friendly state. It was then incorporated in Florida on January 12, 2026, and registered as a foreign profit corporation, meaning a business entity incorporated under the laws of another state that has registered to do business in Florida.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings showed the business reported $1 million in capital, which it raised through a private placement.
Eisen told Newsweek: “Barron Trump’s lifestyle beverage venture has received at least $1 million dollars in private funding in mere months without any history of business and without, apparently, a corporate office, factory, or distribution center. This appears to simply be one more instance of the Trump family and friends trading on the Trump name. Worse, it opens yet another potential avenue of seeking to influence the President through his family’s assorted business schemes.”
Aside from Barron Trump, the 19-year-old New York University sophomore, the business’s directors are listed as Rudolfo Castello, Valentino Gomez, Stephen Hall, and Bernstein. SPI Agent Solutions Inc, a company that provides corporate compliance and legal services, is listed as the company’s registered agent.
Newsweek could not verify the identities of Rudolfo Castello and Valentino Gomez, but Hall, who attended the Palm Beach school Oxbridge Academy with Barron Trump, is a student at the University of Notre Dame.
Bernstein, a student at Villanova University, also attended the Palm Beach school, Oxbridge Academy, with Barron Trump.
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at nonpartisan government watchdog the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) told Newsweek the links between Weitzman and Sollos Yerba Mate looked “fishy from the standpoint of government ethics and conflicts of interest.”
“A company that receives federal contract awards whose principals are also major donors and personal connections of the president is, at minimum, the appearance of impropriety and possible pay-to-play corruption,” he said. “While this kind of thing is not new, it is the kind of thing that has become extremely brazen and more common during the second Trump administration.
“The Barron Trump connection just adds another layer of possible conflict of interest,” he said. “The family members and scions of political families using their familial connections and relationships to enrich themselves is a time-honored kind of legalized corruption in Washington DC. But just like the above example, the Trump 2.0 era has super-charged this kind of corruption and made the swamp exponentially swampier than ever before.”
Sollos Yerba Mate recently said on LinkedIn that the company will launch in April: “Growing up in South Florida, our lifestyle was shaped by the opportunity to spend time outdoors year-round. That experience led us to create SOLLOS™, a beverage designed to complement life in the ‘Sunshine State’.
“’SOL,’ meaning sun in Spanish, represents the sun rising and the beginning of the day. ‘LOS,’ which is ‘Sol’ spelled backwards, represents the sun setting and the end of the day.
“Together, SOLLOS captures the full cycle of the sun and that ‘It Begins Where It Ends™.’”
Barron Trump has previously dabbled in business. In 2025, Newsweek reported that Barron Trump had incorporated a real estate business in July 2024. In the same month. The firm was dissolved in November after Trump won the presidential election.
One of his business partners, Cameron Roxburgh, who also attended Oxbridge Academy with Barron Trump, told Newsweek the team dissolved the company, a high-end real-estate development company that was to be based in Utah, Arizona, and Idaho, to avoid media attention during the election, but that would be relaunched in the Spring. But the company remains inactive.
Barron Trump is also listed as a co-founder of the cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.
In pursuing a business career, he follows in his father’s footsteps. Donald Trump has a vast background in business and holds real estate, hotels, and golf clubs, most of which are managed through the holding company, the Trump Organization. Upon assuming office in January 2025, the Trump Organization announced that Donald Trump would not have any involvement in managing his real estate company during his second term. He appointed an outside ethics adviser, lawyer William Burck, a longtime Republican, to avoid conflicts of interest.
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