The level of corruption that has contaminated and compromised the White House, Congress, and even one of our Supreme Court Justices is unprecedented – and completely unacceptable.
Donald Trump is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his family, administration officials, and business partners like no other president in history ever dreamed of – everything from inaugural and White House ballroom fundraising bribes to pardon kickbacks to cryptocurrency to foreign partnerships to Middle Eastern-funded golf tournaments and luxury jets.
He has even demanded that the Justice Department pay him $230 million of taxpayer money to compensate him for the special counsel investigations into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign as well as the search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – – a demand that may actually be granted since he installed his former defense lawyers for those very cases at the top of the U.S. Justice Department.
Unlike presidents before him, President Trump refused in his first and second terms to put his assets into blind trusts or broadly diversify them to avoid conflicts-of-interests (or even the perception of them). At the beginning of his second term, he made clear he would not refrain from personally participating in any new international business deals. As a result, the intermingling of Donald Trump’s politics and profit-making is staggering, allowing the president and those in his orbit to benefit not only because of their proximity to power, but also from heavily investing in industries the federal government oversees and regulates and that the Trump administration champions.
… and it’s not like President Trump even tries to keep this under wraps. Despite his staff trying desperately to throw everyone off the scent – – White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in May 2025, “I think everybody, the American public, believe it’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency” – – Trump posted: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE,” as a Saudi-backed golf tournament kicked off at Trump National Doral in Florida.
We would say the lines between President Trump’s private business and the business of the American people are now completely blurred but, in truth, there is no longer even a line. Seriously, this is Putin-level depravity… but the difference is that Vladamir Putin doesn’t hold the levers to the most powerful country on earth.
In December 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that, “Ventures launched since Trump’s re-election generated at least $4 billion in proceeds and paper wealth for the family as of December, according to company statements and securities filings." The deals range from cryptocurrency to financial products to communications, and now, there’s even a fusion-power deal. In December 2025, Trump Media and Technology Group announced a merger with TAE Technologies, a company that is developing nuclear fusion technology.
Since being sworn back into office, President Trump has vowed to make the United States a leader in cryptocurrency, signing legislation like the GENIUS Act for stablecoins; issuing an executive order for a strategic crypto reserve; supporting limiting regulations; and rolling back existing guardrails. Plus, the U.S. Justice Department eliminated its crypto enforcement team and the Securities and Exchange Commission paused/dropped lawsuits against high-profile crypto firms.
Meanwhile, an investigation by Reuters found that in the first half of 2025, “the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, based on the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources. Of the first-half total, $802 million – more than 90 percent – came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens.”
< Sidebar: World Liberty Financial is a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor and President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and for peace missions. On the “Meet Our Team” section of World Liberty’s website, the company displays a portrait of President Trump, labeling him a “co-founder emeritus,” along with Steve Witkoff (a footnote says both men were “removed upon taking office.”) Donald Trump’s sons – Don Jr., Eric, and Barron – are presented as co-founders, as are Witkoff’s two sons, Zach and Alex. >
Reuters continues: “That $864 million payday represents actual income – cash flowing, free and clear, into Trump family coffers. Reuters’ calculations were reviewed by half a dozen crypto and real estate experts and a certified accountant who has studied the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s approach to crypto. The Trumps’ first-half crypto income dwarfed what the family earned from its traditional businesses – $33 million from the president’s golf clubs and resorts and $23 million for licensing his name to overseas real estate developers. More than half the Trumps’ income – $463 million – came from sales of World Liberty tokens alone…. The family also made $336 million from sales of a Trump meme coin, $TRUMP, Reuters calculated, using assumptions vetted by five analysts. Due to a lack of transparency in the Trump meme coin business, estimates of income from the coins carry a higher degree of uncertainty than those for WLFI token sales.”
“Reuters interviewed half a dozen foreign crypto entrepreneurs who met with the Trump brothers < Eric and Donald, Jr.>. Five of them said they sought out the younger Trumps for business opportunities because of their proximity to the 79-year-old president and hopes of cashing in on his political and financial power.” They concluded with a bang: “The business has transformed the Trump family’s wealth. Thanks to continuing token sales, the Trumps’ crypto income is now approaching and could even exceed $1 billion.”
Indeed, on October 15, 2025, the Financial Times reported that Donald Trump and his family had earned over $1 billion in pre-tax profits from cryptocurrency ventures in the previous year.
The conflicts-of-interest and potential legal landmines involved here are unprecedented. What happens when ordinary Americans lose lots of money on the U.S. president’s crypto token? … which is exactly what happened when investors collectively lost over $2 billion after the price of $TRUMP crashed (while the family and its partners racked up $100 million in trading fees). What happens if someone needs a political favor from the U.S. president, so s/he very publicly announces a huge purchase of the president’s coins to get his attention?
How is it going to look when the president of the United States holds a private dinner at his Virginia golf club for $TRUMP crypto customers – who spent $148 million for the opportunity to hear him speak from a lectern adorned with the presidential seal – and he gives the top 25 of those customers a private meeting plus arranges a tour of the White House?
…. and how is it going to look when the attendees of that event includes a Chinese billionaire who was the largest holder of the $TRUMP crypto token; is a delegate of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory board that aims to broaden the Communist Party’s influence; and who has been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly inflating the value of a cryptocurrency?
How is it going to look if, as The Washington Post reports, soon after the dinner was announced, “the mostly anonymous investors of the Singapore-based crypto collective MemeCore raced to capitalize on the opportunity. The group of roughly sixty members, many of whom live in China and Southeast Asia, quickly amassed $18 million worth of the coin, securing a seat at Trump’s dinner party” thereby “contributing a share of millions of dollars in crypto transaction fees the Trump venture has collected since the contest was announced.” Just in case there was any doubt why exactly this group would do this, the Post reports that MemeCore chief business development officer Cherry Hsu said in an interview that they “sent a co-founder to the dinner with hopes of shaping Trump’s views on their industry.”
The Washington Post went on to say that, from the time the party was announced until five days before the party itself, “crypto wallets linked to Trump and his partners earned about $3 million in transaction fees. Between the launch of Trump’s token in January 2025 until mid-May, “the president and his partners had received $312 million from crypto sales and $43 million in fees.”
President Trump showed more love for the crypto industry when he pardoned Changpeng Zhao – the Binance cryptocurrency exchange founder and crypto’s richest man – who was convicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for violating U.S. laws by allowing sanctioned entities and criminals to use the exchange. Accusing Binance – the world’s largest crypto exchange – of being a massive money-laundering operation that laundered billions of dollars in illicit funds, the Justice Department imposed a record $4.3 billion fine and strict oversight on the company. The company pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements and was barred from operating in the United States.
Zhao was pardoned after Binance participated in a deal with Trump’s World Liberty Financial that significantly increased the value of the company’s stablecoin and helped elevate their crypto business.
Months before the pardon, The Wall Street Journal reported that the “Trump family had been in talks to acquire a stake in Binance” and that the “Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who served four months in prison after pleading guilty to a related charge, was seeking a pardon from the Trump administration to facilitate Binance’s return to the U.S. market… The talks began after Binance reached out to Trump allies, offering a business deal as part of a plan to return the exiled company to the U.S.”
Even President Trump sensed this pardon was not going to be a popular move. In a November 2025 interview on 60 Minutes, when asked about Zhao’s pardon, the president said, “I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.” …. which, whether true or not, brings up lots of questions about how this man is deciding to pardon people.
But it looks like the allegations against Changpeng Zhao were far from a Biden witch hunt. An analysis by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that “between the guilty pleas and Zhao’s pardon, Binance continued to profit from hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency transactions linked to some of the world’s most notorious organized crime groups. While the company was under the supervision of court-appointed monitors, at least $408 million worth of digital currency flowed to Binance accounts from Huione Group, a Cambodia-based financial firm used by Chinese crime gangs to launder proceeds from human trafficking and industrial-scale scam operations.”
While we’re on the subject, the abuse of the presidential pardon is out of control and has been for decades (President Joe Biden granted 80 pardons and 4,165 commutations during his one term, including one for his own son). But, with the help of the Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin, President Trump has taken the pay-to-play pardon process next level (Ed Martin was an organizer in the Stop the Steal movement who declared “No MAGA Left Behind” regarding pardons).
Living up to that promise, President Trump has pardoned loyal donors, political allies, corrupt politicians, business executives, a drug lord who was also the former president of Honduras, the founder of an online drug bazaar, antiabortion activists, sports stars, rappers, TV reality stars, people who helped him try to subvert the 2020 election, and anyone “convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near” the Capitol on January 6th, which covered at least 1,500 people.
But, as demonstrated by the Changpeng Zhao pardon, never is the abuse of the pardon so stark than when it comes to people who can do something directly for President Donald Trump. Take Paul Walczak, for example. Paul, a former nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes days just after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump practically on Inauguration Day.
Even though the pardon application was technically for Paul, it mainly focused on a woman named Elizabeth Fago, Paul’s mother who had raised millions of dollars for the Trump campaign and had, the application explained, done her part to sabotage Joe Biden by helping publicize the private diary of his daughter Ashley. After weeks of no news, Elizabeth was suddenly invited to a $1-million-per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago that promised an introduction to the president. Less than three weeks later, President Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon for her son.
In 2022, Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, was accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of bribing former Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico two years before. Four years later, as Mr. Herrera faced felony bribery and other charges in the political corruption case, his daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports Donald Trump. In 2025, Mr. Herrera’s lawyer, Christopher M. Kise – who served on Donald Trump’s legal defense team during the FBI investigation into his handling of government documents, as well as for legal issues arising from Trump’s role in the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack – negotiated an eyebrow-raising lenient deal with the Justice Department. The deal allowed Julio Herrera, Wanda Vázquez, and Mark Rossini, a former FBI agent who had worked as a consultant for Mr. Herrera, to plead guilty to misdemeanor campaign finance charges. Isabela Herrera then promptly donated another $1 million to MAGA Inc. Finally, in January 2026, President Trump pardoned Julio Herrera, Wanda Vázquez, and Mark Rossini.
The grift in the current administration doesn’t stop with the president. We already mentioned Steve Witkoff, who, unsurprisingly, had a big role in the World Liberty Financial/Binance negotiations to return the exiled company to the U.S.
Then there’s venture capitalist David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, who is crafting policies highly advantageous to Silicon Valley – like pushing for less government interference and recommending AI-friendly policies even in the face of national security concerns – while maintaining 708 tech investments of his own. Sacks still has these 708 investments even though he received two White House ethics waivers that said he was selling or had sold most of his crypto and A.I. assets. Analysis by The New York Times found that, as of the end of November 2025, these investments included at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to AI. The Times discovered that, while Sacks’ public filings designate 438 of his tech investments as software or hardware companies, the firms themselves have AI in their names and/or promote their work as AI enterprises or as offering AI services.
This prompted no other than Steven Bannon – the former chief strategist to Donald Trump turned self-appointed MAGA overlord – to tell The New York Times that David Sacks is “a quintessential example of ethical conflicts in an administration where ‘the tech bros are out of control.’ They are leading the White House down the road to perdition with this ascendant technocratic oligarchy.’”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is helping sell data center projects that his family companies profit from – just one of several ways his private companies and his work in government overlap. Reporters at The New York Times – who have obviously been very busy! – put it this way: “In his role, Mr. Lutnick has twisted the arms of American allies, dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects. At times, these tactics have created opportunities for his family’s clients to gain access to much-needed foreign capital.... The job of commerce secretary has always been to promote American industry through deal-making at home and abroad, and the position has traditionally been populated with titans of industry who were expected to bring a business sensibility to meetings filled with career government workers. But never in modern U.S. history has the office intersected so broadly and deeply with the financial interests of the commerce secretary’s own family, according to interviews with ethics lawyers and historians.”
On October 30, 2025, one of the Lutnick family companies, Newmark, announced it had closed over $25 billion of data center deals in the previous twelve months. At a conference in Switzerland, Brandon, Howard’s son, said: “We are having our best year ever.” We bet you are, Brandon.
Sometimes, these three guys – Howard Lutnick, Steve Witkoff and David Sacks – band together to further enrich themselves and their boss. They have, for example, negotiated deals to export U.S. advanced microchip technology to, for one, the United Arab Emirates.
This, of course, begs the question: Why in the world would the United States want large data centers to be built in the Middle East instead of the United States? Especially when there are virtually no protections against our technology eventually benefitting China? Why would a supposedly protectionist president, who claims to want to keep manufacturing on U.S. soil and scolds American industries for moving production offshore, move our AI offshore?
Well…. allow us to offer a reason why. Because the Lutnicks and the Witkoffs and the Sacks and, especially, the Trumps have billions and billions of reasons to make folks in the Middle East happy.
For example, the New York Times reported that, after meeting with Steve Witkoff – a billionaire real estate investor and President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East – in Sardinia, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, “a trim figure in dark glasses who controls $1.5 trillion of the Emiratis’ sovereign wealth,” agreed to “deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, a crypto-currency start-up founded by the Witkoffs and Trumps. Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence. Many of the chips would go to G42, a sprawling technology firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, despite national security concerns that the chips could be shared with China.”
** To really understand how this unfolded, we encourage you to read The New York Time’s September 15, 2025 article Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The UAE Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches. The NYT article is careful to include that “no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other” regarding the two deals described above, but we don’t feel that generous. This is about as shady as shady gets. We simply cannot imagine a more startling example of people jeopardizing American exceptionalism for personal greed. **
This, plus all the other UAE international real estate business, and the 12 other global projects, including ones in Serbia, Oman and Vietnam. Trump-branded residential towers and at least one luxury golf resort were green-lit in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, as well as Qatar (who has agreed to finance a Trump-branded beachside golf and luxury villa project there worth $5.5 billion).
Then there’s all the deals the Trump orbit has with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, including their joint cryptocurrency trading enterprise and their $63 billion project in Diriyah, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest government-owned real estate developments, where there will eventually be a Trump-branded 18-hole golf course, luxury hotel and exclusive mansions.
And don’t forget about the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, along with the sovereign wealth funds of the UAE ($300-500 million) and Qatar ($200 million+). In September 2025, Jared’s firm and the Saudi sovereign fund also joined together to take the video game publisher Electronic Arts private, a deal valued at roughly $55 billion. If closed, the deal would be the largest leveraged buyout ever.
Ugh. We need a shower.
But, of course, the monkey business doesn’t end there. We would tell you how much it’s going to cost the United States to renovate the new Air Force One that Donald got for “free” from the Qatari government – the one that will eventually be displayed at his presidential library – but that amount has been conveniently classified. We can tell you that the $400 million super jet Boeing 747-8 “palace in the sky” has five galley kitchens, nine bathrooms and a master suite.
LIV Golf, a Saudi-backed golf league, hosted a tournament at Trump National Doral in Florida, with President Trump joining the festivities by military helicopter. Not only did LIV pay the Trump family to host the tournament, but the event sold out its hotel resorts rooms and restaurants. Likewise, the Republican National Committee has hosted events at Trump’s Doral resort and Mar-a-Lago.
According to a House oversight committee, the Trumps charged the Secret Service as much as 300 percent or more over the agency’s authorized government per diem – and often charged the agency more than it did other hotel guests – when the Secret Service stayed at their hotels while protecting the family during President Trump’s first term. The Washington Post confirmed this in a separate investigation, revealing the Trumps charged the U.S. taxpayer hotel rates as high as $650 per night. The Trump National Golf Club Bedminster charged the Secret Service $17,000 a month to use a three-bedroom cottage, an uncommonly high rent for homes in that area (the agency was billed even for days when the president was not there).
… this, even though Eric Trump claimed multiple times that the Trump organization let Secret Service agents “stay at our properties for free.” He once said, for example, the U.S. government “saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.” …which is a blatant lie.
After Jeff Bezos had dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million to acquire – and $35 million to market – a documentary about Melania Trump, with Melania personally receiving $28 million for serving as an “executive producer.” Despite a strong $7 million opening weekend, ticket sales quickly plummeted – with the film earning roughly $16.6 million in total, with just $291,000 coming from international markets. Meaning, Jeff and Amazon lost over 58 million.
Don Jr. launched a Washington-based members-only club named “Executive Branch” that costs $500,000 to join, and he and Eric are now investors in Powerus, a new drone company going public to meet Pentagon demand. And all that’s before we even get to the really classy stuff, like Donald’s royalties on Bibles, watches, sneakers, phones, guitars, books and fragrances. According to President Trump’s 2024 financial disclosure form, he made $1,306,035 from Bibles sold on Lee Greenwood’s website that have the American flag embossed on the cover along with the words “God Bless The USA.” He made over $1 million from hawking a “45” guitar, $2.8 million from Trump watches, and $2.5 million from Trump sneakers and fragrances. We guess he didn’t have time to resume sales of his vodka, steaks, ties, and mattresses.
The second inauguration of Donald J. Trump was just one big boondoggle bribe. Donald raised $250 million, which was around the amount raised for the last four inaugurations combined (note: any unused funds will go to help build his future presidential library). Unsurprisingly, the oil, crypto, pharmaceutical and financial services industries gave their fair share. However, the single largest contribution was a $5 million check from Pilgrim’s Pride, a chicken processor – whose Brazilian parent company, JBS, (somehow, finally!) received government approval for a U.S. stock listing that it had been trying to get for over a decade. It got this even though a group of fourteen senators – including now Secretary of State Marco Rubio –said in a 2024 letter that approving it was risky because JBS had a “history of blatant, systemic corruption.”
JBS also won big when, less than a month after taking his second oath of office, President Trump signed an Executive Order stopping any investigations and enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, pausing cases involving foreign bribery, public corruption, and money laundering. This benefited the owners of JBS mightily since it stopped any enforcement from a 2020 case where they pleaded guilty to paying bribes in Brazil, agreeing to pay $128 million to settle with American authorities.
Among the $1 million inaugural donor club was JPMorgan Chase, Anheuser-Busch, Nvidia, Blackstone, Google, Adobe, General Motors, Uber, Boeing, Toyota, Comcast, Meta Platforms, Amazon, McDonald’s, Delta Air Lines and Johnson & Johnson. Plus, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, hedge fund managers Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, and Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late Sheldon Adelson.
Some people even got jobs out of the deal. Warren Stephens, who became the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, gave $4 million; Melissa Argyros, the new ambassador to Latvia, gave $2 million; Tilman Fertitta, the new ambassador to Italy, gave a million; and Daniel Newlin, the nominee to be Colombia’s ambassador, gave a million. Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Elon Musk who was originally tapped to lead NASA, gave $2 million – but his nomination was stalled after Elon’s May 2025 clash with The Donald. But great news! After those two crazy kids made up, Isaacman was installed as the new administrator of NASA.
Now all attention turns to the fundraising for the new $300 million ballroom that will replace the White House’s East Wing the president swiftly demolished, where many of the donors that have already been announced – including Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft and Palantir – have pending business before the Trump administration.
As conservative columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “All this was done without public demand or support, and was done in a way that was abrupt, complete, unstoppable… Might the whole thing be open to corruption? Would it even have been attempted in a fully functioning, sharp and hungry republic? Or only a tired one that’s being diminished?”