Yep. A LOT more. President Trump’s disclosure also showed that his investment accounts skyrocketed – from at least $237 million (2024) to at least $858 million (2025).
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: On May 6, 2025, President Trump bought up to $5 million in the U.S. chip powerhouse Nvidia. One week later, he announced that his administration was going to allow Nvidia to export advanced H200 A.I. processors to ten Chinese companies, potentially resulting in a $50 billion market opportunity. Nvidia shares rose 4 percent on the news, pushing the company’s market cap above $5.7 trillion. For the big announcement, President Trump took Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with him to China on Air Force One, where they announced the deal on the very first day. The CEO of Boeing also joined President Trump on Air Force One for the China trip, after the president bought between $1 million and $5 million of the company’s stock. During the trip, President Trump announced that China had committed to purchasing 200 commercial jets from Boeing (Chinese officials didn’t confirm the orders).
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: In July 2025, one of President Trump’s investments accounts purchased between $6 million and $30 million worth of stock in large tech companies, buying at least $1 million apiece in Broadcom, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and, again, Nvidia. Plus, at least $1 million in Alphabet shares. That same day, the Trump/Vance administration announced their “A.I. Action Plan,” laying out their strategy to dominate the A.I. race. The plan included streamlining permitting for data-center development and chip factories.
On August 18th, the president’s accounts made their largest trades of the year, moving over $75 million – over double the action of their next most active day. One of the purchases that day was stock in Intel. Just days later, President Trump announced that the U.S. government planned to take a 10 percent equity stake in the company. Intel’s shares have since increased over 370 percent. Likewise, right after Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, he began showing – rightly – significant support for critical minerals, providing billions of dollars in financing to critical mineral developers to bolster U.S. supply chains.
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: Personally, Donald started buying stock in the critical mineral developer MP Materials. In July 2025, the Trump/Vance administration announced they would take an unprecedented 15 percent equity stake in the company. After MP Materials stock price climbed sharply, the president of the United States sold at least some of his shares, reporting between $100,001 to $1 million in capital gains from his stake in the company.
The Trump/Vance administration also offered up to $1.6 billion in financing to a little-known American company called Kaz Resources for a project to develop a tungsten mine in Kazakhstan (tungsten is a critical metal for weapons systems and computer chips). Within weeks of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick meeting with Kazakhstan president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to seal the deal – and six days before he signed it – Dominari Securities, a firm partially owned by Eric and Donald Jr. Trump, joined with other investors to take a 20 percent stake in a corporate entity tied to Kaz Resources.
< The New York Times describes the relationship between the Trump boys and Dominari Securities this way: “After Mr. Trump returned to the White House, Dominari hired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as paid advisers, giving them stock now worth about $7 million, representing about 10 percent of the company’s total shares. The firm launched an explicit effort to invest in companies aligned with the president’s agenda, ranging from military drones to critical minerals.” >
According to The New York Times, “Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.”
The self-dealing involved here is epic.
The NYT continues: “The arrangement is hardly an outlier. One or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times. All 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees. The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies and federal government.”
Here’s one example: “In June 2026, the Trump administration committed to provide up to $1.6 billion in financial support to USA Rare Earth… That deal gives the Commerce Department 16 million shares of the company’s stock. Cantor Fitzgerald separately earned millions of dollars in fees by helping USA Rare Earth in a series of deals since last year that ultimately raised $1.5 billion for the company. Cantor Fitzgerald, which Mr. Lutnick ran before he became commerce secretary, has long had a division that helps mining companies raise capital. But it has seen a surge in its business helping to launch or finance mining companies, especially those benefiting from Trump administration support.”
< To really understand how this all went down, we encourage you to read The New York Time’s June 28, 2026 article Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit. It’s so gross. >
In addition to his good fortune with Cantor Fitzgerald, Commerce Secretary Lutnick is busy selling data center projects that his family companies profit from. Reporters at The New York Times 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 said: “We are having our best year ever,” with zero sense of irony. We bet you are, Brandon.
Meanwhile, another favored son, Donald Trump, Jr., has also somehow (miraculously) become the next Warren Buffett!!! Somehow (miraculously) his investment firm, for example, tripled in value in just months!!!
Through their investment firm 1789 Capital, he and his business partner Omeed Malik have invested in numerous companies that are directly affected by President Trump’s policies. The New York Times reports: “Many of the companies that 1789 has invested in have large government contracts while others have benefited directly from new Trump policies or rollbacks of existing laws. The firm bought shares in some of the most coveted private companies before many went public, including SpaceX, Anduril, Cerebras and Reflection A.I., often by leveraging their political and business connections to secure a stake or to help boost the companies’ sales. Just two years ago, 1789 managed a few hundred million dollars. It now oversees more than $3 billion. Its main investment fund generated returns of roughly 200 percent as of June 30, according to a person familiar with the firm’s performance. While still early in its investment cycle, those returns eclipse the average returns of about 21 percent from venture capital firms started in 2023, according to PitchBook, a provider of financial data.”
Perhaps the shadiest deal so far is 1789’s investment in Vulcan Elements, a rare-earths magnet manufacturer that was then valued at roughly $200 million. A few months later, the company received a $620 million loan commitment from the U.S. Defense Department. Vulcan is now worth roughly $2 billion.
This is how ProPublica reported the deal: “When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism. The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism. But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s. Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly. After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks, the source said. ‘The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,’ the person said.”
… and it goes on and on and on. President Trump owned Oracle shares while he brokered its deal to buy TikTok. He bought as much as $5 million in Axon stock two weeks before ICE posted a notice seeking a five-year, $220 million Taser contract that experts say only Axon can provide. He bought Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery securities during an eight-month antitrust review by the U.S. Justice Department regarding the $111 billion merger between the two (the DOJ’s Antitrust Division cleared the merger in June 2026, although the deal is on hold after an antitrust lawsuit was filed by a coalition of state attorneys general).
President Trump bought between $247,000 and $630,000 worth of Palantir (an A.I. software maker) stock during the first quarter of 2026. In April, he lavishly praised the company on Truth Social – while displaying its ticker symbol – at a time when the company’s shares were having their worst week in over a year. By mid-2026, his overall stake in Palantir was valued at $1 million or more.
Meanwhile, Palantir landed several major contracts with the U.S. government, including a $30 million contract from ICE; a landmark 5-year, $1 billion blanket purchase agreement that allows Department of Homeland Security agencies like ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to license Palantir’s commercial software; and multiple contracts with the U.S. Department of Agriculture ($13.3 million to design and manage a tool tracking return-to-office mandates for employees; $94.7 million to centralize IT systems; a $250,000 fraud-detection pilot for SNAP; and $300 million for farmland management software). By August 2026, Palantir had experienced a 93 percent revenue growth after its stock surged after stellar earnings.
In July 2026, The New York Times reported that President Trump was paid $2 million by a South Korean company that is facing a trade investigation by the U.S. Commerce Department: “The lead investor in a South Korean aluminum company that has challenged Commerce Department penalties on certain exports from South Korea to the United States made a $2 million payment to President Trump’s holding company.” The president’s disclosure form “offered only a cryptic explanation for the payment, stating that it was part of a ‘letter of intent’ and a ‘nonrefundable development fee.’”
Also in July, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump’s brokerage accounts made big trades around his ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs. From the WSJ: “In a series of trades on April 3 and April 4 – the days after Trump announced global tariffs in the Rose Garden – his investment accounts bought and sold hundreds of individual stocks. The strategy shifted somewhat on April 8, when his accounts only purchased 327 individual stocks, spending more than $3.6 million to scoop up Apple, Berkshire Hathaway and other blue chips. There was no selling that day.” Then, “Trump posted on social media the next morning that it was ‘a great time to buy’ and paused much of his tariff regimen that afternoon. Markets boomed.”
On August 1, 2026, the major financial institution Capital One said an anti-money laundering review triggered the closure of over 300 Trump-affiliated accounts, after the Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued the bank in March 2025 alleging “woke” political debanking. This is the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to Donald Trump and/or his businesses.
Although Capital One has never officially accused the Trumps of illegal money laundering, its court filing argues that “documents and Plaintiffs’ own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (“AML”) reasons. The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One’s AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance.” Yikes.
When asked about the 250 percent revenue increase between a year he wasn’t president and the following year when he was, he tried to explain it away by saying he made the money from a hot stock market: “You know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting.” But in his case, that’s a flat out lie. The vast bulk of the money didn’t come from growth in the stock market but from cryptocurrency. In truth, crypto ventures accounted for more than $1.4 billion of the $2.2 billion.
In 2017, most of the revenue of Donald’s businesses – around 90 percent – came from his domestic golf and real estate portfolio. Back then, he didn’t earn a penny from crypto and even dismissed it as a “scam” that threatened the dollar’s global dominance. But in the first year of his second term, Donald Trump became not only a major player in the crypto industry but also its top policymaker.
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: Since returning to the Oval Office, President Trump has committed to making America a global leader in crypto, signing legislation called the GENIUS Act to promote a form of cryptocurrency called stablecoins – four months after his family-backed firm introduced its own stablecoin. He has also issued an executive order to establish a strategic crypto reserve; pushed for the limiting of regulations; weakened existing safeguards; eliminated the Department of Justice’s crypto enforcement team; and ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pause or drop lawsuits against crypto firms.
President Trump brought in a total of $798 million from World Liberty Financial and a related stablecoin business. 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. Donald Trump’s sons – Don Jr., Eric and, this time, Barron – are co-founders, as are Witkoff’s two sons, Zach and Alex.
Lest anyone think it doesn’t matter that the sons of the president of the United States are co-founders, consider this: Reuters interviewed half a dozen foreign crypto entrepreneurs who met with them and at least five of them admitted that “they sought out the younger Trumps for business opportunities because of their proximity to the president and hopes of cashing in on his political and financial power.”
In April/May 2025 alone, Donald Trump Jr. visited Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria on a paid tour he called “Trump Business Vision 2025,” while Eric Trump visited Qatar, the UAE, and other Middle Eastern countries to market the family’s business ventures.
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: In September 2025, The New York Times reported that, after meeting with Steve Witkoff in Sardinia that summer, 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 all went down, 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 cannot imagine a more startling example of people jeopardizing American exceptionalism for personal greed.
If you disagree, just ask yourself: Why in the world would the United States negotiate a deal to export our advanced microchip tech to the UAE so they can build massive data centers in Abu Dhabi? Especially when there are virtually no protections against our technology eventually benefitting China?
Well, allow us to offer a reason why: The United States doesn’t want this. Donald Trump and his oligarch buddies do.
The Trump family’s business with the United Arab Emirates doesn’t stop there. The UAE is a key partner for their international real estate business expansion, and Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani, chairman of DAMAC Properties, has been a close business partner of Donald Trump for over a decade.
In the first months of the second Trump presidency, the Trump Organization and its partners announced 12 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 agreed to finance a Trump-branded beachside golf and luxury villa project there worth $5.5 billion).
From The New York Times: “The president’s family business, the Trump Organization, has also capitalized on Mr. Trump’s popularity in certain parts of the world, licensing the Trump name to properties in countries that are crucial to U.S. foreign policy interests, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those two deals alone generated more than $14 million for Mr. Trump in 2025, the (president’s financial disclosures) show. The Trump family also continued to pull in chunks of money from real estate branding deals, the new report showed, including some in the Middle East that generated a minimum of $35 million in revenue last year. Deals in Vietnam and Romania, as well as older ones in India, Turkey and Indonesia, combined to bring in at least another $20 million.”
In fact, even though he decided to bomb Iran for God knows why, the Middle East has been great for President Trump’s bank account. The Wall Street Journal reports that “entities from the Gulf paid around $300 million to the president’s businesses (in 2025), more than any other foreign region identifiable in his financial disclosures.”
But Saudi Arabia is just a whole other level. The Trumps and their Saudi-based development partner, Dar Al Arkan, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest private real-estate developers, have at least eight Trump Organization projects in the works.
In November 2025, President Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to the White House, giving him a red-carpet arrival and military honors, plus a lavish dinner attended by American business, finance, and tech leaders. During the trip, the United States formally designated Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally and announced deals on arms sales, nuclear energy, and bilateral investments. Then, in July 2026, President Trump approved an agreement with Saudi Arabia that could potentially provide the kingdom with uranium enrichment capability for its civilian nuclear program, a terrible move for the United States and the world but a huge victory for the Saudi Crown Prince.
… but, nevertheless, President Trump and Prince Mohammed have much more pressing things to collude over, including their joint cryptocurrency trading enterprise and their real estate development deals. One of those deals involves a $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.
When President Trump visited Saudi Arabia in May 2025, he and Prince Mohammed visited Diriyah’s revitalized historical center. In an interview, Jerry Inzerillo, chief executive of the Diriyah development, said – clearly not understanding U.S. ethic rules – that the two leaders talked “not just as heads of state,” but as “visionaries and developers.” When Saudi officials questioned whether it would be appropriate to present architectural models at the state dinner, Inzerillo – again, not understanding U.S. ethic rules – said, “You’re right, you normally wouldn’t do that in a state dinner. It’s not really the normal protocol. But that’s because you’re looking at the president of the United States as the president of the United States. You’re not looking at him as a developer.” Good Lord.
The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner’s (husband of Ivanka and one of his father-in-law’s key negotiators on Middle East policy) 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 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.
Speaking of Jared and Ivanka, thousands of Albanians have been protesting a luxury resort they plan to build on an unspoiled strip of the Mediterranean coastline. Before Jared and Ivanka invaded, this segment of the Albanian coast had been off-limits to developers as a protected landscape, but in 2024 – curious timing, no? – the Albanian government amended the law to allow for high-end tourism facilities of “5 stars or more.”
The protests in Albania are reminiscent of how things went down for Jared in Belgrade, when Affinity Partners had to withdraw from a planned Trump-branded development after protests and indictments (a Serbian special prosecutor indicted a cabinet minister and three other officials over the project).
Even though a special prosecutor is investigating the land sales for the Albanian project and the European Union (EU) has voiced concerns directly to its government, Ivanka didn’t seem to care much about the turmoil, saying the project was “the culmination of all of my experience in real estate.” < insert eye-roll emoji >
Ugh. These people. We need a shower.
But back to crypto. Daddy Trump’s May 2026 financial disclosure revealed that over $635 million of his $2.2 billion came from $TRUMP memecoin, which opens a whole other can of worms – mainly because almost one million people who bought this memecoin lost money through the end of June 2026. Their losses total $3.81 BILLION.
< Let us do the math again, just in case anyone missed it. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, MADE $635 MILLION while many of the people he works for LOST $3.81 BILLION. We forgot to mention that Donald profited whether the price of his memecoin went up or down because he made money any time anyone traded the tokens, which he incessantly pushed people to do on Truth Social >.
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: In February 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notified the crypto industry that these types of tokens would no longer be subject to its oversight. Then in March 2026, through a joint interpretive release by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Trump/Vance administration officially adopted the term “digital commodity” as part of a new five-category crypto asset taxonomy. This marks the first time federal regulators formally codified these definitions into a functional regulatory framework.
This was an enormous win for the crypto industry, even though this potentially exposes the crypto market to shady shenanigans like wash trading, where traders simultaneously (and illegally) buy and sell the same security to manipulate market prices. A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 70 percent of all wash trading – which can involve trillions of dollars every year – happens on unregulated exchanges.
Even before these moves by the Trump/Vance administration, the conflicts-of-interest and legal landmines involved with the $TRUMP memecoin were unprecedented. What actually happens if the president makes $636 million on a trade where ordinary investors lose $3.81 billion? Especially when he relentlessly pushed his followers to buy his tokens using his Truth Social account? 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 those attending 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.”
DIRECT CORRUPTION LINK: 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 brings up lots of questions about how this man is deciding to pardon people.
But the allegations against Changpeng Zhao were far from a Biden witch hunt. A November 2025 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.”
In May 2026, The Wall Street Journal published a report revealing that, in addition to the U.S. Justice Department investigating Iran’s use of Binance to evade sanctions, billions in crypto transactions have flowed through Binance to networks financing Iran’s regime until as recently as that month: “Billions in crypto transactions have flowed through Binance to networks financing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the two years preceding the current U.S.-Iran war, according to Binance compliance reports, blockchain data, foreign law-enforcement officials who track terrorism financing and other crypto researchers and nonpublic documents… The vast sums show how Binance has been used as a financial artery for the IRGC, the powerful political, military and economic force that dominates Iran.”
It’s also important to remember that the Iranian force also supports proxy armies throughout the Middle East, including terrorist-designated groups Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi militants.
The WSJ continues: “Iran’s central bank moved $107 million in crypto through a series of transactions into Binance accounts last year, according to an analysis by a blockchain data firm…. Data compiled by a foreign law-enforcement agency recorded about $260 million in direct transactions during 2024 and 2025 between accounts on Binance and digital wallets associated with Iranian terrorist financiers and sanctioned Iranian entities. In addition, Binance investigators flagged that a digital wallet held by an unknown user outside Binance received money through the exchange and sent $218 million to an Iranian-state financing network in 2023, a transfer confirmed by blockchain data. These funds are on top of the roughly $1.7 billion that Binance investigators concluded moved through Binance to that same Iranian network, as previously reported by The Wall Street Journal in February. The Binance compliance reports said the Iranian actors moved funds using sophisticated techniques in an effort to evade detection. The funds moving through Binance to Iran-linked groups largely corresponded to payments from Chinese buyers of Iranian oil, part of a sanctions-busting trade that is controlled by the IRGC and that is a significant revenue source for the regime, according to foreign law-enforcement officials, Binance compliance reports and the nonpublic documents.”
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.
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 (that said, ABC News reports that lawmakers say it could cost as much as $1 billion). 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. We can also tell you that, right after the president started using the plane in July 2026, it was grounded on security grounds because of hostilities with Iran (which was probably a smart move given that several prominent Hamas terrorists have come from Qatar and the mastermind of 9/11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worked for the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water while he funded and coordinated international terrorist plots).
The New York Times reported that the new plane “lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities, according to multiple officials who have been briefed on how the jet was retrofitted.” Naturally this enraged the president, who demanded the U.S. Department of Justice haul five New York Times reporters in for questioning – for reporting the truth. Incidentally, the DOJ also sought subpoenas targeting family members of the journalists, including parents and spouses, which is a new low. < After the very first court hearing – where U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian eviscerated the DOJ over “sloppy legal work” and government overreach, the DOJ voluntarily withdrew the subpoenas. >
… and on and on it goes. 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.
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. 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. Her husband’s May 2026 financial disclosure reported that Melania earned $11 million from the project.
In addition to all his other endeavors, Don Jr., the new Warren Buffett, launched a Washington-based members-only club named “Executive Branch” that costs $500,000 to join.
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. I guess he didn’t have time to resume sales of his vodka, steaks, ties, and mattresses.
In 2025, Donald Trump’s merchandise and publishing revenue reached around $17 million, including Trump watches ($4.7 million) – which included one watch sent to customers that spelled “Rump” instead of “Trump” and another that featured an image the company didn’t own, resulting in a cease and desist letter against them; the “Save America” book ($1.89 million); the “A MAGA Journey” book ($552,685); Trump sneakers and fragrances ($67,634); and, of course, Greenwood Bibles ($208,486).
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 infamous 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.
We would get into the creepy Stalin-like Trump banners the DOJ installed all over Main Justice – which were part of a nearly one million dollar “beautification” project – the $160 million spent on the Freedom 250 events that no one went to; the tacky $100 million Trump triumphal arch; and the new $600 million ballroom that will replace the White House’s East Wing the president demolished, where many of the already announced donors – including Palantir, Coinbase, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft – have pending business with the Trump/Vance administration, but we are thoroughly sick of writing about all this.
We'll just let conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan sum the ballroom up: “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?”