Approving the Ambler Road and buying into the miner, tripling a megadonor's stake overnight

Editor's note: reporting documents that a presidential decision sharply raised the value of a major donor's stake, but no official record establishes his donations or a link to the decision.

In April 2024 the Interior Department rejected permits for the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial route across the southern Brooks Range, finding it would harm at-risk wildlife populations and critical food sources for Native communities and damage permafrost that would make reclamation unlikely. On October 6, 2025 the president signed a decision reversing that rejection and directing every involved agency to promptly issue the necessary authorizations. The White House said the earlier decision had ignored Alaska's economic needs and national security, and that the road is vitally important to American defense and prosperity. The same announcement disclosed that the United States would invest about $17.8 million for a roughly ten percent equity stake in Trilogy Metals, the Vancouver company whose Alaskan project the road would serve, together with warrants to buy a further 7.5 percent, as part of a $35.6 million investment with Trilogy and South32. As of August 2026 the investment had not closed.

Trilogy opened the next morning up about 245 percent, reaching an all-time high and a market capitalization near $1.1 billion. The company has five full-time employees, has never earned revenue, and lost $9.2 million over the prior twelve months. John Paulson, a major donor to the president who had been considered for Treasury Secretary, held about 8.7 percent, more than fourteen million shares. Their value went from roughly $30 million to more than $100 million. Other holders gained too, among them a Trilogy board member and longtime Alaska Native leader.

The countervailing facts are real. The administration's stated rationale, that China dominates the critical-minerals supply chain and the deposit holds copper, cobalt, zinc, and gallium, is a policy judgment a president is entitled to make, and the equity stake means the public also holds a position. Paulson received no grant; his gain came through shares anyone could buy, on an announcement he is not alleged to have known of in advance. No prosecutor has alleged and no court has found any exchange. Securities filings show he sold his entire Trilogy holding between October 1 and December 31, 2025 without publicly explaining why, and the shares later fell to about $4. What is documented is that a presidential decision, reversing an environmental rejection, moved a donor's holding by roughly $70 million in a single day, and that the same document committed federal money to the company whose shares he owned.