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A Kazakh mining firm merged with an American developer referred to as Skyline Builders Group in April. Amongst Skyline Builders’ largest traders are President Donald Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric.
That Kazakh mining firm was itself created in a 2025 deal facilitated by Trump and Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The Trump administration greased the skids of this 2025 cope with a $900 million taxpayer-backed line of credit from the Export-Import Bank, a federal company that subsidizes U.S. firms’ abroad dealings.
That’s, an organization the Trump sons are invested in merged with an organization the administration helped create. Don Jr. and Eric say they’d no data or affect over the Ex-Im subsidy, but it surely’s one in every of many offers the place Trump administration coverage appears to revenue Trump’s household enterprise.
Each few weeks brings information of one other crypto deal, Gulf State partnership, or Chinese language enterprise involving each a Trump-connected firm and a Trump administration coverage.
And the president thinks that is all high-quality.
American ventures
Skyline Builders, which invested within the Trump-subsidized Kazakh mining undertaking, is a undertaking of a bigger funding fund, American Ventures, which is in flip owned by a monetary group referred to as Dominari Holdings. Eric and Don Jr. reportedly own about 12% of Dominari.
The household ties run deeper. The guardian firm of American Ventures, Dominari Holdings, is headquartered in Trump Tower in Manhattan, and American Ventures itself is headquartered in Palm Seaside close to the Trump sons’ enterprise headquarters.
Eric and Don Jr. sit on Dominari Ventures’ advisory board.
American Ventures’ complete play is betting on an “America First” flip within the financial system. The fund is focusing on “new applied sciences that create American jobs and cut back US dependence on international sources.”
Particularly, “drone manufacturing, crypto and AI” are among the many fund’s goal sectors according to the Financial Times.
Trump has labored to put the U.S. authorities behind all of those sectors, the place his sons are investing hundreds of thousands.
For instance, Trump issued an executive order titled “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” in 2025. “It’s the coverage of the US to guarantee continued American management within the improvement, commercialization, and export,” the manager order reads. The order instructed the Federal Aviation Administration to speed up federal funding on commercializable drone know-how, and to prop up the “American Drone Industrial Base.”
Likewise, Trump is propping up cryptocurrency. He signed the “GENIUS Act,” which creates a regulatory framework for some cryptocurrencies. Specialists describe the legislation as one thing of a giveaway to the issuers of those stablecoins.
Crypto schemes and Gulf states
Cryptocurrency is famously a playground of fraudsters and cash launderers as a result of crypto has no underlying worth. For that cause, the Trumps’ dalliance in crypto deserves scrutiny and skepticism.
After his election however earlier than his inauguration, Trump launched his personal cryptocurrency — the Trump coin, which works by the ticker image $TRUMP. $TRUMP just isn’t actually a foreign money. It’s referred to as a “meme coin” as a result of it’s principally a memento or pure hypothesis.
The coin just isn’t backed by something. You can’t pay your taxes in it. You can’t redeem your $TRUMP in trade for something with the Trumps. And every time somebody buys $TRUMP, the corporate CIC Digital prices a transaction payment of kinds. CIC Digital is owned by Trump.
So each purchaser of $TRUMP was enriching Trump.
The one factor of actual worth $TRUMP offered its prime patrons? Entry to the president. Trump hosted a dinner for the highest 220 holders of the coin in Might 2025, and a VIP reception for the highest 25. Provided that $TRUMP had no underlying worth, these folks have been paying Trump merely for entry to him.
That is totally different from the odd Washington corruption, the place contributing to a politician’s reelection buys entry. These donors weren’t funding a marketing campaign: they have been immediately enriching Trump.
However this wasn’t the Trumps’ solely cryptocurrency.
In late 2024, Eric Trump introduced the creation of World Liberty Monetary, a “DeFi platform.” The corporate is one thing like a web based financial institution, however with out all of the laws.
The Trump household, by means of a company entity referred to as DT Marks DEFI LLC (DT for “Donald Trump”) again then owned most of World Liberty Monetary. WLF issued its personal cryptocurrency, which works by the ticker image $WLFI.
$WLFI just isn’t a memecoin. It’s additionally not precisely a cryptocurrency. It’s a crypto-token that provides its holder a vote within the governance of World Liberty Monetary. It’s one thing like a voting share in a financial institution, however not precisely.
World Liberty Monetary additionally points a correct cryptocurrency referred to as $USD1, which is pegged to the U.S. greenback. An important buy utilizing this Trump-connected foreign money was when MGX, an funding fund backed by the federal government of Abu Dhabi, invested in Binance, a crypto large whose founder was pardoned in 2025 by Donald Trump.
The Wall Road Journal’s Sam Kessler reported earlier this yr one thing that had been a secret for the primary yr of the second Trump time period: Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of Abu Dhabi’s president, purchased 50% of the Trumps’ World Liberty Monetary stake simply days earlier than Trump’s inauguration.
As with the traders within the $TRUMP coin, Tahnoon’s main funding appears to have purchased him entry to Trump and his inside circle, together with a White Home assembly in March 2025.
Abu Dhabi on the time was lobbying to acquire entry to U.S.-made superior microchips. The Biden administration had barred such gross sales, anxious that China may subsequently acquire entry to this delicate know-how.
The Journal reported: “Two months after the March assembly, the administration dedicated to give the tiny Gulf monarchy entry to round 500,000 of probably the most superior AI chips a yr—sufficient to construct one of many world’s largest AI knowledge heart clusters.”
Once more, Trump thinks that is all high-quality.
‘No one cared, and I’m allowed to’
In his first time period, Trump introduced that he would bar his sons from doing enterprise with international governments in order to keep away from conflicts of curiosity. He now believes this slight nod to ethics was a mistake.
“I prohibited them from doing enterprise in my first time period, and I bought completely no credit score for it,” Trump told the New York Instances. “I didn’t have to do this. And it’s actually unfair to them.”
In a way, Trump is correct that he “didn’t have to do this.” Ethics guidelines and conflict-of-interest legislation usually don’t apply to the president. Most presidents keep away from such dealings out of an inside ethical sense or at the very least political considerations. Trump apparently determined that there was no upside, as a result of folks didn’t sing his praises for this first-term sacrifice.
“I came upon that no person cared, and I’m allowed to,” he mentioned.
A YEAR OF CRONYISM AND SELF-ENRICHMENT FOR TRUMP
Democrats are seemingly to take over the Home of Representatives within the subsequent election. They may undoubtedly launch a collection of investigations into the Trump household and the Trump administration.
If Democrats comply with their sample from Trump’s first time period, they may waste their time on liberal-media fever desires. If, as a substitute, they need to expose actual impropriety and corruption, they may look into the intersection of Trump household enterprise dealings and the Trump administration’s official actions.
