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. Seriously, this is Putin-level depravity.
Donald Trump is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his family like no other president in history – involving everything from inaugural fundraising bribes to cryptocurrency to Middle Eastern-funded companies, golf tournaments and luxury jets. On May 14, 2025, The New York Times revealed that “at least $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just the last month.” That same month, Bloomberg reported that Donald Trump, “since the early days of his reelection campaign, has more than doubled his net worth.”
In the first months of Trump’s second presidency, the Trump Organization and its partners announced twelve international projects, including ones in Serbia, Oman and Vietnam. Trump-branded residential towers and at least one luxury golf resort were green-lit in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The sovereign and/or royal funds of all three of these have also committed over $3.5 billion to a private-equity fund run by Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner.
Amazon reportedly paid Melania $40 million for a biographical documentary that she will also “produce.” Don Jr. is starting a Washington-based members only club that costs $500,000 to join. We would tell you how much it’s going to cost 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.
The second inauguration 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 Donald’s 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, who is nominated to be 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 ultimately a casualty, if not part of the cause, of Elon’s final clash with the Donald.
Turning to perhaps the most corrupt issue of them all, most of the Trump family is now heavily involved in the crypto scene, with one of their companies, World Liberty Financial, receiving a $2 billion investment from the United Arab Emirates. Three days before his second inauguration, The Donald announced the launch of his $TRUMP memecoin (a type of cryptocurrency), posting on X, “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Melania debuted her crypto token two days later (however, typical of these things, the price of Donald’s token, after surging roughly ten times in value, fell by half within a week).
The conflicts-of-interest and potential legal landmines involved here are unprecedented – and mind-blowing. 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. What happens if, for example, 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 if the president of the United States holds a private dinner at his Virginia golf club for $TRUMP crypto customers and, for the top 25 of those customers, attends a private meeting plus arranges a tour of the White House?
…and what if the attendees of those events include a Chinese billionaire who is now 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 would this group do this? They sent “a co-founder to the dinner with hopes of shaping Trump’s views on their industry, MemeCore chief business development officer Cherry Hsu said in an interview.”
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.”