UAE crypto deal triggers corruption allegations against Trump administration

Following revelations that a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates invested half a billion dollars in a cryptocurrency company owned by the Trump family, President Donald Trump is being accused of grave ethical transgressions.

The deal was completed in January 2025, four days prior to Trump’s inauguration. The Trump administration later authorized the sale of 500,000 cutting-edge Nvidia AI processors to the United Arab Emirates, despite concerns that the technology would wind up in Chinese hands, raising more questions about the agreement.

Ethics watchdogs call investment a constitutional violation

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who holds powerful positions in the UAE government, financed the January 2025 investment. Tahnoon serves as the Gulf nation’s national security advisor and oversees a massive $1.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund.

Donald Sherman leads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He called the arrangement a “blatant, disgraceful conflict of interest and a possible violation of the Constitution’s Federal Emoluments Clause.” Sherman warned that Americans would now have to wonder whether White House decisions affecting the UAE “are in the best interest of the public and American workers, or a foreign nation that padded the president’s bottom line.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, representatives of Tahnoon reached an agreement to purchase a 49% ownership share in World Liberty Financial four days before the inauguration. World Liberty Financial is a cryptocurrency venture co-owned by the Trump family. The purchase price totaled $500 million.

Records reviewed by the Journal show that Tahnoon’s team paid the Trump family and companies connected to Steve Witkoff half of the investment immediately. Witkoff co-founded World Liberty and also serves as Trump’s Middle East envoy. Trump-linked entities received $187 million, while Witkoff’s businesses got $31 million.

A White House spokesperson responded by saying the president “is not involved in running his businesses and has turned them over to his children, so these business endeavors do not involve him.” The spokesperson dismissed suggestions that Trump violated the federal emoluments clause, calling such claims “bogus and irrelevant.”

David Warrington, White House counsel, issued a statement saying: “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”

Ethics specialists have expressed concern for years about how Trump organized his businesses. Most presidents place their assets in a blind trust managed by an outside party. Instead, Trump gave control to his sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump.

Trump used the same structure during his first presidency. However, he significantly grew his family’s business empire between leaving office and returning to the White House. Trump businesses now operate in social media, streaming services, nuclear fusion, financial services, and cryptocurrency.

Kedric Payne, who serves as general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, described the situation as extraordinary. “I can’t think of any president in modern history who had an international business that could even get [him] into this type of predicament.”

White House meetings preceded chip export approval

Despite claiming to stay away from family business matters, Trump met with Tahnoon several times after returning to the White House. Trump hosted a dinner at the White House for Tahnoon and a UAE delegation in March.

Two weeks following an announcement that a UAE division would invest in a crypto exchange, the White House revealed the UAE would be permitted to import Nvidia chips. The previous Biden administration had blocked AI chip exports to the UAE because of its ties with China.

The Guardian reported finding no proof that the president directly traded chip exports for the investment. Richard Briffault, a Columbia University law professor, noted that “the situation of a major investment by a foreign power in a major company that the president has a major stake in, that creates a structural conflict of interest.”

Briffault explained: “The concern is that we can never be sure why certain decisions are being made.” Regarding the chip export decision, he said “it could have been influenced by the fact that the country has a major investment in a Trump family business. We just can’t know for sure.”

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren issued a statement demanding action. “Congress needs to grow a spine and put a stop to Trump’s crypto corruption,” Warren said. “The Trump administration must reverse its decision to sell sensitive AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.“

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