Trump’s household is embroiled in a $500m UAE scandal. We’ve hardly observed

[ad_1] D ays earlier than Donald Trump returned to workplace in January 2025, an funding agency managed by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal household secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to purchase nearly half of a cryptocurrency startup based by the Trump household. Below some other president, such an association, which was revealed this previous weekend by the Wall Road Journal, would trigger a political earthquake in Washington. There could be calls for for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of harm management.

However this newest instance of corruption involving Trump and his household 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 within the shadow of Trump’s inauguration, which instantly enriched the president and his household. The deal to amass a 49% stake in World Liberty Monetary, the crypto firm based by the Trump household and several other allies within the fall of 2024 throughout Trump’s presidential marketing campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the highly effective officers within the UAE. Often called 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 on the planet, serving as chair of two Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, which have $1.5tn in belongings, and G42, a agency targeted 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 actual property offers price billions of {dollars}, a few of which contain non-public firms backed by governments of the three wealthiest Arab petrostates: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. In Might, 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 army so Trump can use it as Air Pressure One. It was in all probability the most costly present from a international authorities in US historical past – and Trump has stated the airplane will likely be transferred to his presidential library when his time period ends in 2029, which means he may nonetheless use it after he leaves the White Home.

In late Might, the president hosted a personal dinner at his Virginia golf membership for the 220 largest patrons of his memecoin, known as $Trump, which is a sort of cryptocurrency linked to an internet joke or mascot and has no inherent worth. The highest 25 patrons within the crypto contest acquired invited to a VIP reception with Trump and a White Home tour. In all, the Trump household’s crypto enterprise raked in about $148m from the competition, most of it from international or nameless patrons. The highest spender was Justin Solar, a Chinese language crypto billionaire who purchased greater than $20m price of Trump’s memecoins. (In February 2025, a number of weeks after Trump took workplace, the Securities and Change Fee suspended a civil fraud case it had introduced in opposition to Solar in 2023 – resulting in accusations that he was getting favorable remedy as a result of he had invested $75m in one other of the Trump household’s crypto tasks. A spokesperson for Solar stated he had “not requested particular remedy, nor conditioned any industrial 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 identified case of a international authorities official buying a serious 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 capability – and the flexibility of his whole administration – to barter international coverage and act as an trustworthy dealer. How can Washington credibly strain the UAE on its function fueling a civil struggle in Sudan, when the Emirates’ nationwide safety adviser is a enterprise companion of the US president?

Over the previous decade, Tahnoon has steered international coverage negotiations with the US over main points together with preventing terrorism, financial investments and securing UAE entry to superior laptop know-how. In March, he visited Washington and met with Trump, having access to prime cupboard members and being feted at a White Home 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 household’s crypto firm.

The revelations additionally underscore why Trump’s foray into crypto has become probably the most profitable, and harmful, means for him to revenue from the presidency. After Trump’s first time period, his household enterprise expanded past an actual property conglomerate that licensed the Trump model to accommodations, golf resorts and residential towers world wide – it now consists of media platforms resembling Reality Social and varied crypto ventures. General, the Trumps generated $1.4bn from crypto tasks over the previous yr, making up nearly a fifth of the household’s estimated fortune of $6.8bn, based on Bloomberg.

These crypto ventures are notably ripe for exploitation as a result of they permit Trump and his household to gather a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} from international traders and authorities officers who would normally have a troublesome time channeling cash to a US politician. Trump isn't solely enriching himself by the presidency, he’s tapped into an trade that's rife with fraud and a scarcity of transparency. Inside months of returning to workplace, the Trump administration started to decontrol the trade 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.

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 Whereas the infusion of $500m into World Liberty Monetary final yr was a terrific deal for Trump and his household, it didn’t make a lot monetary sense for Tahnoon, the UAE royal who engineered the funding right 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 acquired 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 household’s crypto firm and the UAE authorities. At a crypto convention in Dubai in Might, Trump’s son Eric and a enterprise companion, Zach Witkoff (who can be the son of Steve Witkoff, the president’s particular envoy to the Center East), introduced 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 worth of $1, and the MGX transaction may generate tens of tens of millions of {dollars} in curiosity income for the president and his household annually.

On the crypto conference, Zach Witkoff hailed the MGX deal as an endorsement of World Liberty’s capabilities as a tech startup. However he didn't disclose that the 2 firms shared main traders and have been being led by a number of the similar 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 within the Trump household’s crypto agency, the Trump administration allowed the UAE to purchase a whole bunch of 1000's of superior laptop chips important for AI improvement. The chips are made by US firms, particularly Nvidia, and the Biden administration had restricted what number of chips sure international nations should buy to forestall the know-how from being misused. However Trump scrapped these restrictions.

Some US nationwide safety officers objected to promoting superior chips to the UAE and nervous that Emirati firms would share them with China, which may use the know-how to boost its army methods. In an investigation revealed in September, the New York Occasions 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 within 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 know-how to the UAE – and claims that Trump and Witkoff don't have any battle of curiosity as a result of they've stepped apart from their household companies. “The president has no involvement in enterprise offers that might implicate his constitutional duties,” the White Home counsel, David Warrington, stated on Sunday, after the newest 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 some other presidency. And as Trump and his household tally the increasing income from their crypto empire, the remainder of us should reckon with the fee to our democracy.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Middle for Close to Jap Research, and a journalism professor, at New York College

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