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The rocky highlands of Central Asia, in a remote region of Western Mongolia, are home to a plummeting population of the largest sheep in the world, the argali. The endangered species is beloved for its giant curving horns, which can run over 6 feet in length.

On a hunting trip this August, Donald Trump Jr. shot and killed one.

His adventure was supported by government resources from both the U.S. and Mongolia, which each sent security services to accompany the president’s eldest son and grandson on the multiday trip. It also thrust Trump Jr. directly into the controversial world of Mongolian trophy hunting — a polarizing practice in a country that views the big-horned rams as a national treasure. The right to kill an argali is controlled by an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics.

Trump Jr. received special treatment during his summer trip, according to records obtained by ProPublica as well as interviews with people involved in the hunt. Listen to the episode.

The Mongolian government granted Trump Jr. a coveted and rare permit to slay the animal retroactively on Sept. 2, after he’d left the region following his trip. It’s unusual for permits to be issued after a hunter’s stay. It was one of only three permits to be issued in that hunting region, local records show.

Afterward, Trump Jr. met privately with the country’s president, Khaltmaagiin Battulga, before departing the capital of Ulaanbaatar back to the U.S., according to Khuantai Khafezyn, a local government official in the region where Trump Jr. hunted the argali and a former government official with knowledge of the meeting. It isn’t clear what was discussed. Trump Jr. wouldn’t answer questions about the meeting. Representatives for Battulga haven’t responded to requests for comment.

“What are the chances the Mongolian government would’ve done any of that to someone who wasn’t the son of the United States’ president?” asked Kathleen Clark, a professor specializing in legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She said that though Trump Jr. is not a government employee, he’s nonetheless politically influential, incentivizing foreign officials such as the Mongolian leader to treat him favorably out of a “desire on the part of a foreign government to curry favor with the president’s family.”

In response to questions from ProPublica about the hunting trip, a spokesman for Trump Jr., an avid outdoorsman, said in a statement it was a purely personal expedition. He purchased the seven-day Mongolian hunting trip at a National Rifle Association charity auction before his father announced his candidacy for president in 2015, the spokesman said, and flew commercial in and out of the country. It’s unclear if the auction item listed an argali or mentioned meetings with Mongolian government officials.

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