Brian Slodisco and Will Wysert
WASHINGTON (AP) — If one theme appears in President Donald Trump’s second term, that’s it.
From crypto coins to Bibles to overseas development contracts to future mobile phone lines, Trump’s family business has been raked up for hundreds of millions of dollars since his election.
“He is the president and is supposed to work for the benefit of the people,” says James Serber, professor emeritus at American University, who has been studying lobbying, campaign finance and political corruption for decades. “Instead, he helps his own personal interests to grow his own wealth. That’s not quite normal.”
The amount accumulated by the Trump organization, a collection of businesses managed by the president’s children, is much greater than what his family collected during his first term as president, when sponsoring his hotels, resorts and golf courses was Deligul to give favor to the well-known trading commander.
In the second time, the Trump family’s ambitions are far more spectacular, spreading from cyberspace to far-reaching regions around the world. One of Trump’s cryptocurrencies is conservatively estimated to have drawn at least $320 million since January, while another received a $2 billion investment from foreign government wealth funds. A third sold at least $550 million in tokens.
His sons are spurting into the Middle East, lining up new development deals, and their daughter and son-in-law are working with the Albanian government to build resorts on the Mediterranean island. Even first lady Melania Trump has signed a $40 million documentary deal with Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos was Trump’s frequent target during his first presidency, with the company having extensive contracts with the federal government.
Do you want to drain the swamp?
The deal rejected Trump’s first-term pledge to “eject swamps” in Washington, and warned the influential efforts of former President Joe Biden’s family, which Trump and his allies attacked as “Biden Criminal Family.”
Democrats have denounced Trump for his overlapping role as beneficiary and president, but he will not face any immediate impact on such a widespread interest conflict. The Congress is controlled by Republicans, and his administration stocks the loyalty that has dismantled many surveillance guardrails. Last summer, the Supreme Court held that the conservative majority had been cemented by Trump and that the president had a wide immunity from indictment.
Even in rare cases where Trump’s allies have warned him, the president ignores them. That’s what happened when he embraced a $400 million “beautiful, big, spectacular, free plane” from the Qatar government. Trump said the Boeing 747 would “go in person” to his presidential library when he left office.
“It’s Mount Everest of corruption,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat.
Since Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, the president has put in considerable effort to avoid the emergence of such a conflict.
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan kept their assets in the “blind trust,” while George HW Bush used “diversified trust” to prevent them from knowing what they have in their portfolio. His son, George W. Bush, used a similar arrangement.
Barack Obama was the exception, but his investments were mostly bland combinations of index funds and the US Treasury. During his first term, Trump even nodded to ethics. He issued a suspension on foreign transactions. But instead of placing his assets in blind trust, like many of his predecessors, he handed over the reins of the Trump organization to his children, which kept his financial holdings.
This time he hasn’t made such a gesture. His sons, Eric and Donald Jr., are running the business again while Trump is in office. And while the White House says he’s not involved in daily decisions, the trust he has established continues to profit. He promotes resorts, merchandise and family crypto ventures while living in the White House from his account, a true social, a social media company that he and his allies launched.
He also promoted one of the Trump shoes, the Bible and one of the Trump guitars made in China. Conservative groups and the Republican committee have spent at least $25 million on Trump’s fortune since 2015, most of which came from Trump’s own political organisations, campaign finance disclosures show.
Trump accepts the code
However, these ventures become pale compared to his exploitation in cryptocurrency. This provides perhaps the clearest example of a conflict of interest that has come to control Trump’s second term.
Trump was once a crypto skeptic, declaring that cryptocurrency “is not money,” based on “thin air” and was thought to be “like a scam.” But by the time he was running again for the president, he became an industry advocate.
“The difference now is that he realized it could be his scam,” said Hillary Allen, a law professor at an American University who specializes in banking and cryptocurrency.
Trump has pledged to turn the United States into “global crypto capital,” and to roll back industry surveillance.
Of course, deregulation helps his own business. At the height of the campaign, Trump announced the launch of his own Cryptocoin and World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company run by his son and several business associates. Among those partners was Steve Witkoff, who is now one of Trump’s top diplomatic envoys.
The Trump organization and the world’s Liberty Financial declined to comment.
But it was rooted in his 2024 campaign as well. At a crypto event held at the Mar-A-Lago club in Florida in May 2024, he received assurance that industry figures would spend luxury re-electing him, The Associated Press previously reported.
Recently, when asked at the White House whether he would consider retreating his family business from crypto investments to avoid questions about conflicts of interest, Trump said: “We have created a very strong industry.
“I don’t care about investment. You know, I have kids and they believe it, so they invest in it,” Trump added of Crypto. “But I’m the president and what I did was to build an industry that is very important, and if we didn’t have it, China would.”
White House: Trump’s Crypto Push Not Driven by Self-interest
White House spokesman Harrison Fields has repeatedly stated that Trump’s crypto boosterism is not driven by self-interest.
He “takes critical action to establish clarity in the regulation of digital financial technology and secure America’s position as a global leader in the digital asset economy,” Fields said.
The “Trump administration” and Fields added that “it is fulfilling the president’s promise to make the United States the crypto capital of the planet by promoting innovation and economic opportunities for all Americans.”
Trump is expected to sign the Cryptocurrency Act, approved by Congress on Thursday. Among the provisions is the prohibition of members of Congress who issue their own brands of certain types of cryptocurrencies. The ban does not extend to the president.
Fields said it was unfair to equate critics’ conflict of interest charges with accusations of conflict of interest against Trump with the president’s own proposal that Biden’s family had benefited financially while he was in office.
He said Trump’s policies have not personally benefited the president and have nothing to do with his family’s economic concerns, and that Trump has entered the White House to an already successful businessman who doesn’t need a political career to get rich.
Still, Trump’s family is looking to benefit financially from the growing influence of the crypto industry. According to the World Liberty Financial website, it holds majority ownership rights 75% of the revenue from the first coin released last September.
Coin, $wlfi, was not a success immediately. After that, sales began after the presidential election.
A few days before his inauguration, Trump announced a new meme coin, $Trump during “Crypto Ball.”
“Time to celebrate everything we stand for: Win!” Trump posted on his X account. “Participate in my special Trump community. Get $ Trump now.”
Trump Meme Coin generated at least $320 million in fees
Memecoins, often created as jokes without real utility, are prone to wild price fluctuations that often enrich small groups of insiders at the expense of unsleashed investors. $Trump surged above $70, but its prices quickly collapsed and for many, they lost money. It has been hovering about $10 since March. But Trump did well. By the end of April, coin had earned more than $320 million in fees, according to an analysis by crypto-tracking company Chain Orisis.
“Stablecoin” is the third cryptocurrency released in April, known as USD1.
It appears to have advantages for Trump’s cryptocurrency investors and peers.
China-born crypto billionaire Justin Sun has disclosed nearly $200 million in investments in various Trump crypto ventures. In this moment, the Trump administration announced it had suspended securities fraud cases against him. In June, Sun announced that he was making public his crypto company Tron after securing funds through a transaction brokered by Eric Trump. Last week, Sun posted on Twitter that he was buying another $100 million worth of Trump meme coins.
It’s not just the sun. Changpen Zhao, a convicted felon who founded the Crypto Exchange Binance, was a Trump Stubcoin (part of Megadale, which invested $2 billion in USD1), a UAE-controlled asset fund, which had bought Zhao’s stake in Binance.
The deal gave great publicity to the world’s Liberty Financial and instantly made stubcoin one of the tops in the market. Trump’s family and his business partners can also reinvest $2 billion and collect interest estimated to be worth $80 million a year.
Shortly after the purchase was announced, Trump granted the UAE greater access to the American artificial intelligence chips that he had long sought. Binance and Zhao also benefited.
Binance is restricted in the US and has reconciled with the Biden administration, which sent Zhao to prison in 2024. Prosecutors said he looked the other way around as criminals used his platform to move money related to child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.
In May, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its final federal enforcement action against Vinance. Zhao, who goes to CZ, now seeks pardon. The White House says there has been no decision to issue such grants of generosity.
White House Tour for Top Crypto Investors
Trump announced a new promotion to exchange presidency a few months ago. He was hosting dinner at his Virginia Golf Club for his Meme Coin, $ Trump’s Top 220 investors.
It promoted a temporary rise in the value of the coin. It also helped to enrich the Trump organization, which is entitled to collect fees when coins are traded. A month later, Trump spoke to dinner attendees and stood before the president’s sealed lecture. The White House said at the time it had nothing to do with Memecoin.
For decades, campaign contributions and lobbying have been ruled by laws that require some degree of transparency about how much donors can give, and limit the way politicians use the money they nurture. Trump’s adventures in cryptocurrency effectively eschew these laws, legal and financial experts say.
“It’s very similar to the Trump Hotel from the first semester, but what Crypto did is abandon the need for hotels,” said law professor Allen. “Since crypto assets can be made from thin air, he found a way to create an unlimited supply of assets to those he wants to give.”
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Associated Press writer Aaron Kessler contributed from Washington.
Original issue: July 18, 2025 7:13am EDT
