Days earlier than Donald Trump returned to workplace in January 2025, an funding agency managed by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal family secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to purchase nearly half of a cryptocurrency startup based by the Trump family. Beneath another president, such an association, which was revealed this previous weekend by the Wall Avenue Journal, would trigger a political earthquake in Washington. There could be calls for for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of injury management.
However this newest instance of corruption involving Trump and his family enterprise hardly made a blip over the previous few days, relegated to a passing headline in a relentless information cycle typically dominated by Trump’s actions and statements.
This scandal deserves our consideration: a half-billion-dollar transaction with a international authorities official, executed in the shadow of Trump’s inauguration, which instantly enriched the president and his family. The deal to amass a 49% stake in World Liberty Monetary, the crypto company based by the Trump family and several other allies in the autumn of 2024 throughout Trump’s presidential marketing campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, probably the most highly effective officers in the UAE. Generally known as the “spy sheikh”, Tahnoon is the brother of the UAE’s president and serves as nationwide safety adviser. He additionally oversees one of many largest funding empires in the world, serving as chair of two Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, which have $1.5tn in belongings, and G42, a agency centered on synthetic intelligence.
It’s dizzying to maintain up with the ways in which Trump has monetized the presidency and used it for private revenue in his second time period. The Trump Group, run by the president’s sons, has negotiated international real estate deals price billions of {dollars}, a few of which contain personal firms backed by governments of the three wealthiest Arab petrostates: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. In Could, as Trump ready to go to the Center East, Qatar’s authorities donated a $400m luxurious Boeing jet, which is being refitted by the US navy so Trump can use it as Air Power One. It was in all probability the costliest present from a foreign government in US historical past – and Trump has stated the aircraft will probably be transferred to his presidential library when his time period ends in 2029, that means he may nonetheless use it after he leaves the White Home.
In late Could, the president hosted a private dinner at his Virginia golf membership for the 220 largest consumers of his memecoin, known as $Trump, which is a sort of cryptocurrency linked to a web-based joke or mascot and has no inherent worth. The highest 25 consumers in the crypto contest received invited to a VIP reception with Trump and a White Home tour. In all, the Trump family’s crypto enterprise raked in about $148m from the competition, most of it from international or nameless consumers. The highest spender was Justin Solar, a Chinese language crypto billionaire who purchased greater than $20m worth of Trump’s memecoins. (In February 2025, a few weeks after Trump took workplace, the Securities and Trade Fee suspended a civil fraud case it had introduced towards Solar in 2023 – resulting in accusations that he was getting favorable therapy as a result of he had invested $75m in one other of the Trump family’s crypto initiatives. (A spokesperson for Sun said he had “not requested particular therapy, nor conditioned any business exercise on regulatory selections”.)
Regardless of the sheer scale of those conflicts surrounding Trump over the previous yr, the $500m deal involving World Liberty and the UAE’s Tahnoon is “the one recognized case of a international authorities official buying a main stake in a Trump firm after his election”, because the Journal reported. By intertwining his private fortune with the ruling households of the Gulf, Trump has compromised his skill – and the flexibility of his total administration – to barter international coverage and act as an trustworthy dealer. How can Washington credibly strain the UAE on its role fueling a civil struggle in Sudan, when the Emirates’ nationwide safety adviser is a enterprise associate of the US president?
Over the previous decade, Tahnoon has steered international coverage negotiations with the US over main points together with combating terrorism, financial investments and securing UAE entry to superior pc expertise. In March, he visited Washington and met with Trump, getting access to prime cupboard members and being feted at a White House dinner – honors usually bestowed on a visiting head of state. The general public didn’t know concerning the secret deal Tahnoon’s funding agency had signed two months earlier with the Trump family’s crypto firm.
The revelations additionally underscore why Trump’s foray into crypto has become probably the most profitable, and harmful, manner for him to revenue from the presidency. After Trump’s first time period, his family enterprise expanded past a actual property conglomerate that licensed the Trump model to inns, golf resorts and residential towers world wide – it now consists of media platforms akin to Reality Social and numerous crypto ventures. Total, the Trumps generated $1.4bn from crypto initiatives over the previous yr, making up nearly a fifth of the family’s estimated fortune of $6.8bn, according to Bloomberg.
These crypto ventures are significantly ripe for exploitation as a result of they permit Trump and his family to gather hundreds of millions of dollars from international traders and authorities officers who would normally have a tough time channeling cash to a US politician. Trump is not solely enriching himself by means of the presidency, he’s tapped into an trade that is rife with fraud and a lack of transparency. Inside months of returning to workplace, the Trump administration started to deregulate the industry and ordered the justice division to disband a nationwide unit devoted to investigating crypto-related fraud, which was arrange in 2022 underneath Joe Biden’s administration.
Whereas the infusion of $500m into World Liberty Monetary final yr was a nice deal for Trump and his family, it didn’t make much financial sense for Tahnoon, the UAE royal who engineered the funding into a fledgling crypto agency that was doing little enterprise earlier than Trump took workplace. So what did the UAE get in return for its cash?
It appears the authoritarian monarchy received the keys to unlock the way forward for synthetic intelligence. Tahnoon’s secret funding turned out to be one in every of two massive transactions final yr involving the Trump family’s crypto firm and the UAE authorities. At a crypto convention in Dubai in Could, Trump’s son Eric and a enterprise associate, Zach Witkoff (who is additionally the son of Steve Witkoff, the president’s particular envoy to the Center East), announced that MGX, one other firm chaired by Tahnoon, would make investments $2bn utilizing a stablecoin issued by World Liberty. A stablecoin is a sort of digital foreign money that maintains a value of $1, and the MGX transaction may generate tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in interest revenue for the president and his family every year.
On the crypto conference, Zach Witkoff hailed the MGX deal as an endorsement of World Liberty’s capabilities as a tech startup. However he failed to disclose that the 2 firms shared main traders and have been being led by a number of the identical executives. Tahnoon’s earlier $500m funding enabled him to call two members of World Liberty’s board – and people two administrators additionally served on the MGX board, based on the Journal’s investigation.
Two weeks after MGX’s $2bn funding in the Trump family’s crypto agency, the Trump administration allowed the UAE to purchase tons of of hundreds of superior pc chips crucial for AI improvement. The chips are made by US firms, particularly Nvidia, and the Biden administration had restricted what number of chips sure international international locations should purchase to stop the expertise from being misused. However Trump scrapped these restrictions.
Some US nationwide safety officers objected to selling superior chips to the UAE and anxious that Emirati firms would share them with China, which may use the expertise to boost its navy techniques. In an investigation revealed in September, the New York Times revealed that the UAE’s negotiations with the Trump administration over entry to AI chips concerned Steve Witkoff and Tahnoon – and intersected with the Emirates’ funding in the Trump (and Witkoff) households’ crypto enterprise.
The White Home insists that there was no connection between the World Liberty crypto transaction and the administration’s choice to promote AI expertise to the UAE – and claims that Trump and Witkoff haven’t any battle of curiosity as a result of they’ve stepped other than their family companies. “The president has no involvement in enterprise offers that might implicate his constitutional duties,” the White Home counsel, David Warrington, said on Sunday, after the most recent revelations concerning the UAE royal’s funding in World Liberty. “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound method, and to counsel so in any other case is both ill-informed or malicious.”
Whereas Trump’s aides argue that he’s dwelling as much as the best moral requirements, the Republican-led Congress has proven little curiosity in investigating an astonishing collection of corrupt actions and self-enrichment that might have devastated another presidency. And as Trump and his family tally the increasing income from their crypto empire, the remainder of us should reckon with the price to our democracy.
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Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Heart for Close to Jap Research, and a journalism professor, at New York College
