An funding firm tied to the United Arab Emirates acquired almost half of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm, a $500 million stake, 4 days earlier than President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, based on a report Sunday by The Wall Street Journal.
The deal, signed by the president’s son Eric Trump, gave the Emirati-backed firm a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump-linked crypto enterprise co-founded by family members of the president and Steve Witkoff, his high envoy to the Middle East, The Journal reported.
The enterprise partnership between the Trumps and Emirati-linked buyers raises contemporary questions concerning the president’s potential conflicts of curiosity. The Journal cited sources and firm paperwork that confirmed the patrons — lieutenants of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a United Arab Emirates royal, the nation’s nationwide safety adviser and supervisor of its largest wealth fund — paid up entrance, with $187 million going to Trump family entities and a minimum of $31 million going to Witkoff family entities.
The White House sought to tamp down any considerations over conflicts.
“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly mentioned in an announcement Sunday.
“Mr. Witkoff, like all Administration officials, takes seriously his compliance with the government ethics rules. As Special Envoy for Peace Missions, he has not and does not participate in any official matters that could impact his financial interests. He has also divested from World Liberty Financial, notwithstanding his ability and willingness to recuse,” White House counsel David Warrington instructed NCS in an announcement.
NCS has reached out to the United Arab Emirates Embassy for remark.
A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial confirmed the funding to NCS on Sunday, stressing that neither Trump nor Witkoff was concerned in the transaction.
“Neither President Trump nor Steve Witkoff had any involvement whatsoever in this transaction and have had no involvement in World Liberty Financial since taking office,” the spokesperson, David Wachsman, instructed NCS in an announcement.
As a part of the settlement, two senior officers at corporations backed by Sheikh Tahnoon joined World Liberty’s board after he pressed the US for entry to superior synthetic intelligence chips, based on The Journal, an allegation Wachsman flatly denied to NCS.
“Any claim that this deal had anything to do with the Administration’s actions on chips is 100% false,” Wachsman mentioned in an announcement to NCS. “The leftwing media is dishonestly pushing baseless innuendo in an effort to deceive the public and smear our company. As a private business, we operate by the same rules and regulations as any other company in our space, do not want or receive any special treatment, and reject the fact-free suggestions to the contrary.”
Wachsman mentioned the choice was pushed purely by enterprise issues.
“We made the deal in question because we strongly believe that it was what was best for our company as we continue to grow,” he mentioned, including that “the idea that, when raising capital, a privately-held American company should be held to some unique standard that no other similar company would be held is both ridiculous and un-American.”
Still, the transaction is unprecedented in trendy US politics, involving a international government-linked official taking a big possession stake in an organization tied to the family of a sitting president.
“We are proud to report that since this investment took place, our company has grown materially,” the World Liberty spokesperson mentioned, including the firm “today would be valued well in excess of the original investment level and would be ranked among the fastest-growing fintech platforms globally.”
World Liberty Financial lately started buying and selling a brand new governance token, WLFI. While Trump and Witkoff are actually listed as “emeritus” co-founders, their sons proceed to market the corporate all over the world, whilst the president pushes to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche argued that related preparations occurred beneath earlier administrations.
“President Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening, and so there’s nothing unprecedented about the Trump Organization going out and trying to make investments that basically all will come back to the American people and jobs in this country,” Blanche mentioned on ABC’s “This Week.”
That protection stood in sharp distinction to the response from Democratic officers and former members of previous administrations, who accused the Trump family of blurring the road between public workplace and personal acquire.
Richard Stengel, who served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in the course of the Obama administration, labeled the settlement corrupt in a social media submit.
“The level of corruption is mind boggling, shameless, and unprecedented. Never before has a foreign government official taken a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company,” Stengel wrote.
Democratic lawmakers echoed these criticisms, accusing the Trump family of utilizing the presidency to financially profit from foreign-linked investments.
“Trump has wasted no time in his second term enriching himself and his family off the presidency while driving up costs on everyday Americans,” Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee mentioned in a social media submit.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren went additional, calling for congressional scrutiny of figures tied to the president and the corporate.
“Corruption, plain and simple,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. “Congress needs to grow a spine and put a stop to Trump’s crypto corruption.”
When the Trump family unveiled the cryptocurrency enterprise in September 2024, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., instructed it could present alternatives for individuals who can’t get financing from conventional banks.