If there is one theme that has clearly stood out during the second term of US President Donald Trump, it is this: he has used the power of his office for personal gain in a way that is unprecedented in history.
From cryptocurrencies to Bibles, from foreign investment deals to an announced line of cellphones, Trump family businesses have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since his reelection, representing an unprecedented influx of often opaque money from billionaires, foreign governments, and crypto tycoons with interests in the federal government.
“He is the president and he should be working in the public interest,” said James Thurber, a professor emeritus at American University who has spent decades researching lobbying, campaign finance and political corruption. “Instead, he is using his position to increase his own wealth. It is completely abnormal.”
The sums raised by companies in the Trump Organization, a business conglomerate controlled by the president's children, far exceed those from his first term, when using his hotels, resorts and golf courses was a common way to curry favor with a president known for his transactional approach.
In his second term, the Trump family’s ambitions have grown significantly, from the digital sphere to remote regions around the world. One of Trump’s cryptocurrencies has raised at least $320 million since January, according to conservative estimates, while another has received a $550 billion investment from a foreign government sovereign wealth fund. A third has sold tokens worth at least $XNUMX million.
His sons have traveled to the Middle East to close new investment deals, while his daughter and son-in-law are working with the Albanian government to build a luxury resort on a Mediterranean island. Even First Lady Melania Trump signed a $40 million deal with Amazon to make a documentary, even though the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, was a frequent target of Trump’s attacks during his first term as president, and Amazon’s subcontractors cooperate extensively with the federal government.
Drain the swamp?
This wave of business deals represents a blatant rejection of Trump's first-term promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington, and far surpasses the attempts to influence government by former President Joe Biden's family, which Trump and his allies have often called the "Biden crime family."
While Democratic officials have criticized Trump for conflicts of interest in his role as both president and personal beneficiary, he is unlikely to face immediate consequences. Congress is controlled by his fellow Republicans, and his administration is filled with loyalists who have dismantled many oversight mechanisms. The Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority thanks to Trump, ruled last summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution.
Even on rare occasions when Trump's allies have urged caution, he has ignored them. This was the case when he accepted a "beautiful, big, magnificent, free plane" from the Qatari government, worth $400 million. Trump said at the time that the Boeing 747 would "go straight" into his presidential collection after he leaves office.
“It’s the Mount Everest of corruption,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon.
Ever since Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, presidents have gone to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of a possible conflict of interest.
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan placed assets in “blind trust” (a legal and financial arrangement in which the owner of an asset transfers management of that asset to an independent trustee, without any right to see or participate in its management during the term of the arrangement), while George H.W. Bush used “diversified trust” that prevented him from knowing what he was investing in. His son, George W. Bush, used a similar mechanism.
Barack Obama was an exception, but his investments were mostly a nondescript mix of index funds and U.S. Treasury bonds. During his first term, Donald Trump even signaled some concern for ethics by imposing a moratorium on foreign business arrangements. But rather than handing over assets to a blind trustee, as many of his predecessors have done, he has left the running of the Trump Organization to his children, essentially retaining control of his finances.
This time, he didn’t even bother. His sons, Eric and Donald Jr., are once again running the family business while Trump is in office. Although the White House says he is not involved in day-to-day decision-making, the fund he created continues to make a profit. Trump promotes his resorts, his own-brand merchandise, and his family’s crypto projects while in the White House, often through his account on Truth Social, a social network he launched with allies.
He also promoted a line of Trump sneakers, a Bible made in China, and Trump-branded guitars — including a $1.500 Gibson Les Paul replica with the words “Make America Great Again.” Conservative organizations and Republican committees have spent at least $25 million at Trump properties since 2015, campaign finance records show, with most of that money coming from Trump’s own political structures.
Trump embraces cryptocurrencies
Yet all of those business ventures pale in comparison to his involvement in the world of cryptocurrency - an area that perhaps most clearly illustrates the conflicts of interest that have marked Trump's second term.
Once skeptical of crypto, Trump claimed that cryptocurrencies “are not money,” that they are based on “air,” and that they “look like a scam to him.” However, by the time he re-entered the presidential race, he had become an outspoken advocate for the industry.
“The difference is that he realized it could be his scam,” said Hillary Allen, a law professor at American University who specializes in banking and cryptocurrencies.
Trump promised to make the US the "crypto capital of the world" and announced the abolition of regulations in this area.
Such deregulation, of course, also benefits his own companies. At the height of the campaign, Trump announced the launch of his own cryptocurrency and the formation of World Liberty Financial, a crypto-finance company that would be run by his sons and several business associates. Among the partners was Steve Witkoff, now one of Trump's most important diplomatic envoys.
But it was all part of his 2024 campaign. At a crypto event held at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in May 2024, Trump, according to an earlier AP report, received assurances that industry leaders would generously fund his reelection.
When asked recently at the White House whether he would consider withdrawing the family business from crypto investments to avoid accusations of conflict of interest, Trump replied:
“We have created a very powerful industry. That is far more important than anything we have personally invested in.”
“I’m not interested in investing. You know, I have kids who are investing in it because they believe in it,” Trump added of crypto. “But I’m president, and what I’ve done is I’ve built an industry that’s very important. And if we didn’t create it, China would have created it.”
White House: No conflict of interest
White House spokesman Harrison Fields claims that Trump's promotion of cryptocurrencies is not driven by personal interests. He is "taking decisive steps to establish regulatory clarity in the field of digital financial technologies and secure America's position as a world leader in the digital asset economy," Fields said.
“President Trump’s administration,” Fields added, “is fulfilling the President’s promise to make the United States the crypto capital of the planet, fostering innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans.”
Trump signed a new cryptocurrency law last Friday, long advocated by the industry. Among the provisions of the law is a ban on members of Congress from issuing their own “stablecoin” — a specific type of cryptocurrency. The ban, however, does not apply to the president.
Fields said it was unfair to equate critics' allegations of Trump's conflicts of interest with Trump's claims that Joe Biden's family benefited financially while he was in office.
He pointed out that Trump's policies did not bring personal financial benefit to the president and had nothing to do with his family's interests - and that Trump entered the White House as an already successful businessman who did not need a political career to become rich.
Still, the Trump family is in a position to profit significantly from the growing influence of the crypto industry. According to the company’s website, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family owns a majority stake that entitles them to 75 percent of the profits from their first cryptocurrency, which launched in September last year. The token, under the ticker symbol $WLFI, was not an immediate success. However, after Trump’s election victory, sales skyrocketed.
Just before his inauguration, Trump announced a new “mime” cryptocurrency called $Trump during the “Crypto Ball,” a gala gathering in Washington, D.C., designed to symbolically mark the beginning of a new era of crypto market regulation that Trump has promised to implement.
“It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: VICTORY!” Trump wrote on his X network account. “Join my special Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW.”
Hundreds of millions from cryptocurrency
Mime cryptocurrencies, often created as a joke and with no real purpose, are prone to sudden and extreme price swings that mostly enrich a small number of investors, while ordinary investors often lose money. Trump’s token $Trump reached a value of over $70, but it quickly crashed, causing losses for many. Since March, its price has hovered around $10. Trump, however, has not fared badly. By the end of April, the cryptocurrency had brought in more than $320 million in fees, according to analysis by crypto market tracker Chainalysis.
A third cryptocurrency, a stablecoin called USD1, was launched in April.
Trump's investors and business associates have apparently also benefited from his crypto ventures.
Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire who made his fortune in cryptocurrency, announced that he had invested nearly $200 million in various Trump crypto projects. During that time, the Trump administration put on hold a securities fraud case against Sun. In June, Sun announced that he was going public with his crypto company, tron, after securing financing through a deal reportedly brokered by Eric Trump. Last week, Sun announced on the X network that he was buying an additional $100 million worth of Trump’s mime cryptocurrency.
San is not alone. Changpeng Zhao, a convicted felon and founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was part of a mega-deal in which a sovereign wealth fund controlled by the United Arab Emirates invested $1 billion in Trump's stablecoin USDXNUMX, and used the funds to buy out a stake in Zhao's company Binance.
The deal brought massive attention to World Liberty Financial and immediately made the USD1 stablecoin one of the market leaders. It will also allow the Trump family and their partners to reinvest those funds and collect interest that could reach $80 million annually.
Shortly after the purchase was announced, Trump granted the United Arab Emirates greater access to American artificial intelligence chips—a technology it had long sought. Binance and Zhao himself also benefited.
Binance previously had limited operations in the United States. A plea bargain was reached during the Biden administration that saw Zhao sentenced to prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws. Prosecutors said he ignored evidence that criminals were using his platform to move money linked to child trafficking, drugs and terrorist financing.
In May, the Trump administration's Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its last federal lawsuit against Binance. Zhao, known by his nickname CZ, is now seeking clemency. The White House said that decision has not yet been made.
White House tour for top crypto investors
A few months ago, Trump announced a new promotional campaign that reunited his presidency with his personal business: he organized a dinner at his golf club in Virginia for 220 of the largest investors in his $Trump cryptocurrency, along with a special tour of the White House for 25 of the most significant investors.
The announcement temporarily boosted the cryptocurrency’s value. It also brought additional revenue to the Trump Organization, which has the right to collect fees every time the token is traded. A month later, Trump addressed the dinner attendees, standing at a podium bearing the presidential seal. At the time, the White House said it had “nothing to do” with the cryptocurrency.
For decades, political donations and lobbying have been regulated by laws that limit the amounts donors can contribute, require a certain level of transparency, and dictate what politicians can spend the money they raise. However, as legal and financial experts point out, Trump's foray into cryptocurrency effectively circumvents those laws.
“It’s very similar to Trump’s hotel from his first term, but what crypto has made possible is that there’s no longer a need for the hotel itself,” said law professor Hillary Allen. “Because crypto-assets can be created out of nothing, Trump has found a way to generate an unlimited amount of assets that he offers to those who are willing to give him money.”
Prepared by: NB
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