Trump family deal spree could open door for future presidents to profit from office

NEW YORK (AP) — For the Trump family, business has never been this good.

Whereas the Trump Organization didn’t do a single deal overseas in Donald Trump’s first term as president, it did eight in the past year.

It got more than double the money in the four months of his second term selling Trump “meme” coins than it did in four years running a massive Washington D.C. hotel the last time he was in office.

And there are more potential conflicts as the family makes money investing in companies dependent on federal contracts and seeking taxpayer funded grants and loans.

“Whatever constraints there were in the first term appear to have completely disappeared,” says Columbia University historian Timothy Naftali.

Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer worries about the message Trump is sending to future presidents.

“He has shown politically there is no price to be paid to making money,” he said. “You know you can go there.”

Deal-making spree abroad

The White House said Trump has no conflicts of interest, reiterated that his assets are in a trust managed by his children and said that he has “no involvement” in family deals. In a separate statement, the Trump Organization said, “The implication that politics has enriched the Trump family is unfounded.”

But compared to Trump's first term, the gusher of recent family deals and the questions they raise stand out.

In Qatar, a Trump golf club and villa project is being developed in part by a company owned by the Qatari government. In Vietnam, where The New York Times reported the government pushed farmers off their land to make way for a Trump resort, the country’s deputy prime minister signed off on the deal at a ceremony. And in Saudi Arabia, a planned “Trump Plaza” resort on the Red Sea is being built by a Saudi real estate developer close to the ruling family.

Whether the deals played any role in changing U.S. policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know but the countries did get what they wanted – access to advanced U.S. technology for Qatar, tariff relief for Vietnam and fighter jets for Saudi Arabia.

And the Trump Organization got something too: Tens of millions in fees.

The UAE, crypto and Binance

Another deal raising conflicts of interest questions relates to one of the family's crypto ventures.

Days before the inauguration, the Trump family sold nearly half of its World Liberty Financial crypto business to a UAE government-linked company run by a member of the UAE royal family for $500 million.

A second UAE entity, a government fund, invested in the offshore cryptocurrency exchange Binance using $2 billion worth of a digital currency called a stablecoin issued by World Liberty. That allowed the Trump company that received the dollars to put it in safe investments such as bonds or money market funds and keep the tens of millions of dollars in interest for itself.

Shortly after, the Trump administration reversed a Biden-era restriction and granted the UAE access to advanced U.S. chips. Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, later got a pardon from Trump, despite having pleaded guilty to failing to stop criminals from using his platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.

Asked about the pardon, the White House said Zhao was a victim in what it called “The Biden Administration’s war on crypto.” A Zhao lawyer added in an email, referring to his initials, “Any claim of a quid pro quo by Binance or CZ, or preferential financial treatment by Binance, is a clear misstatement of the public record."

Crypto billions

World Liberty has also provided a separate income stream to a new Trump limited liability corporation through sales of “governance tokens” that give owners certain voting rights in its business, though not equity stakes, raising $2 billion last year. That translates into hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trumps through their World Liberty ownership stake and a separate side deal allowing them a cut of these sales.

One big token investor was Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency billionaire who as a foreign citizen would be banned under U.S. law from making political donations to U.S. politicians. Between Trump’s election and inauguration, Sun spent $75 million on the tokens.

In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging Sun with duping investors was paused before being settled last month for a $10 million fine.

Then there are the souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with Trump’s face that went on sale days before he took the oath of office last year.

Over the next four months, the coins generated $320 million, mostly going to Trump-related entities, according to blockchain tracker Chainalysis. Unlike the lobbyists or campaign donors trying to influence Trump, the coin buyers can buy anonymously.

Add it all up and, according to Forbes estimates, Trump’s net worth is now $6.3 billion, soaring 60% from before he returned to office.

New year, new profits

In the first months of Trump’s second year back in the White House, the momentum hasn’t let up.

Last month, his oldest sons struck a deal giving them stakes in an armed drone maker seeking contracts with the Pentagon and with Gulf states under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.

Other government contractors in which one or both have gotten ownership stakes this past year include a rocket motor maker, an AI chip supplier and a data analytics company.

Asked about potential conflicts after the drone deal was announced, Eric said, “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in.” A spokesman for Donald Jr. said he doesn’t “interface” with the government on companies in his portfolio."

As for the president, he has mostly shrugged off the issue of conflicts, telling The New York Times in January, “I found out that nobody cared.”