You've Been Trumped, an independent project made on a modest budget, has proven one of the most popular Scottish documentaries of the year. But in taking on tycoon Donald Trump, director Anthony Baxter made an influential enemy, and he and his colleague Richard Phinney were arrested in July last year on charges of trespassing. Now Baxter has received a formal apology from Grampian Police.
Baxter is dismissive of the apology and the enquiry that led to it. "[It] only lends credence to the growing public perception that Grampian Police, the Scottish Government, and the Trump Organisation [worked] closely together to the detriment of local residents, our natural environment, and the public's right to know," he argues. "All that had happened was that the police had received an unfounded complaint from a person working for Donald Trump, who was apparently nervous that the journalists, acting in an entirely professional manner (according to the NUJ) had uncovered evidence that the Trump Organisation had cut off water supplies to local residents (including an 85 year old woman) and was making little effort to reinstate it."
During the enquiry it emerged that witnesses who claimed to have seen Baxter and Phinney on Trump's land without permission were all employees of the Trump estate. Police Chief Inspector Martin Mackay said he could understand why this would cause grievance. He insisted, however, that is officers had behaved properly and professionally.
You've Been Trumped tells the story of local campaigners opposing Trump's plans for a golf course near Aberdeen.
