Donald Trump Jr.’s Private DC Club Has Mysterious Ties to an Ex-Cop With a Controversial Past

When the Executive Branch soft-launched in Washington, DC, last spring, the private club’s initial buzz centered on its starry roster of backers and founding members. The president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. is one of the club’s several co-owners, according to previous reporting. Founding members reportedly include Trump administration AI czar David Sacks and his All-In podcast cohost Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as crypto bigwigs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

“We wanted to create something new, hipper, and Trump-aligned,” Sacks said at the time. Proximity to Trumpworld didn’t come cheap; though the club headquarters is located in a basement space behind a shopping complex, fees to join are reportedly as high as $500,000.

The initial wave of press for the MAGA hotspot identified Trump Jr. and his business associates Omeed Malik, Chris Buskirk, and Zach and Alex Witkoff as the club’s co-owners. A Mother Jones report later revealed the involvement of David Sacks’ frequent business associate Glenn Gilmore, a Bay Area real estate developer who is given a variety of titles on official documents, including co-owner, managing member, director, and president.

But according to corporate filings reviewed by WIRED, there’s another key figure whose involvement has not been previously reported, and whose connection to its more famous founders remains unclear: Sean LoJacono, a former Metropolitan Police Department cop in Washington, D.C. who gained local notoriety for his role in a stop and frisk that resulted in a lawsuit.

According to the legal complaint, in 2017, after questioning a man named M.B. Cottingham for a suspected open container law violation, LoJacono conducted a body search. A recording of the incident went viral on YouTube, sparking intense debate over aggressive policing tactics. “He stuck his finger in my crack,” Cottingham says in the video. “Stop fingering me, though, bro.” The next year, the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia sued LoJacono on behalf of Cottingham, alleging that LoJacono had “jammed his fingers between Mr. Cottingham’s buttocks and grabbed his genitals.” Cottingham agreed to settle his lawsuit with LoJacono and was paid an undisclosed amount by the District of Columbia (which admitted no wrongdoing) in 2018.

The MPD announced its intention to dismiss LoJacono following an internal affairs investigation, which concluded that the Cottingham search was not a fireable offense, but that another search he had conducted the same day was. By early 2019, LoJacono had appealed his dismissal, arguing in well-publicized hearings that he had conducted searches according to how he had been taught by fellow officers in the field. Initially, the dismissal was upheld. However, the police union’s collective bargaining agreement enabled LoJacono to further appeal to a third-party arbitrator, which in November 2023 ruled in LoJacono’s favor.

Instead of returning to the police force, though, LoJacono has gone down a different path. A LinkedIn account featuring LoJacono’s name, likeness, and employment history lists his profession as “Director of Security and Facilities Management” at an unnamed private club in Washington, DC from June 2025 to the present. Official incorporation paperwork for the Executive Branch Limited Liability Company filed to the Government of the District of Columbia’s corporations division in March 2025, shortly before the club launched, lists LoJacono as the “beneficial owner” of the business. The address listed on the paperwork matches the Executive Branch’s location. Donald Trump Jr. and other reported owners are not listed on the paperwork; Gilmore is listed on this document as the company’s “organizer.”

The paperwork indicates that LoJacono is considered a beneficial owner of a legal entity associated with the Executive Branch. But what does that mean, exactly?

“You have to have some engagement in some role controlling the company,” Gary Kalman, the executive director of the anti-corruption nonprofit Transparency International U.S., tells WIRED. This does not necessarily mean majority control, Kalman adds. But it suggests, at a minimum, a substantial minority stake.

The US Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network defines “beneficial ownership information” as “identifying information about the individuals who directly or indirectly own or control a company.” The Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection for the District of Columbia confirmed to WIRED that a beneficial owner per its legal definition owns or controls 10 percent of a company, or has a managerial role in day to day activity.

In another filing from March 2025 made for an entity called Executive Branch Security Company, LoJacono is once again listed as a “beneficial owner.” This entity’s status was “cancelled” in January 2026. (It is not unusual for business owners to initially file and then cancel trade name forms as they complete paperwork to become a Limited Liability Company.)

LoJacono and Gilmore’s names appear repeatedly in official documents, though not always together. A separate corporate filing for an entity called Executive Branch LLC, initially made in Wyoming, identifies Gilmore as a “president” but does not mention LoJacono. In a fourth corporate filing made to the District of Columbia government on behalf of an entity known as Executive Branch Security Company LLC in January 2026, Glenn Gilmore is listed as a “beneficial owner” and LoJacono is not listed at all.

The Executive Branch did not respond to requests for comment. LoJacono, Gilmore, and Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment. David Sacks did not respond to requests for comment.

It is still unclear how LoJacono became associated with the upper echelons of Trumpworld. His family members have worked for the government for several generations; his father was an MPD commander, while his grandfather was a Federal Bureau of Investigation chemist and forensic scientist who worked on pivotal investigations including the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” case on the deaths of civil rights activists.

It is also not unprecedented for MAGA’s power players to employ people who have been accused of violating another person’s rights. High-profile Silicon Valley Trump boosters Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz hired Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine best known for fatally choking a mentally ill man on the subway. Penny joined an investment team at Andreessen Horowitz in 2025, a year after he was acquitted for criminally negligent homicide, despite a lack of professional investment experience.

Matt Giles contributed to this report.