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How the US president Trump and his clan ushered in a new golden age of corruption#corruption   #American-style corruption    #Democratic Party  #Fraud #scandal  #American President  #American celebrity  #politician   #dark history  #untold history 

At the crypto conference in Dubai, the Trump-Witkoffs announced that a fund backed by Abu Dhabi would be making a $2bn business deal using a stablecoin belonging to World Liberty Financial. WLF’s digital coin would be used to enable MGX, the Emeriti fund, to buy into Binance, a crypto exchange operating under US government supervision since 2023, after admitting to violating federal money-laundering laws. In addition to the UAE, WLF has partnerships with crypto companies based in Hong Kong and Israel, among others.

A company “affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members” owns 60% of WLF, according to its website. Libowitz says this gives investors “ the ability to direct millions of dollars directly to Trump”, potentially giving them leverage over the president, as they can inflate or deflate the value of his holdings. “ We know Trump cares deeply about what his net worth is and where it puts him on a list of billionaires,” Libowitz says.

WLF is the speartip of Trump’s crypto interests. Days before his second inauguration, $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins made millions for Trump-affiliated companies, which own 80% of all stock in the coins and stand to benefit when their prices rise. (A memecoin is a digital currency whose value is driven by hype rather than limited supply.) Later this month, Trump will host a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for 220 of $TRUMP’s biggest investors. The announcement of that dinner led one investor to plough more than $24m into the coin.

Since his second inauguration, regulatory rules for crypto that could inflate the value of Trump’s holdings – and those of his sons – have been rewritten. The latest, a stablecoin bill, narrowly failed to clear a vote in the Senate this week. Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said it would “make it easier for the president and his family to line their own pockets. This is corruption and no senator should support it.”

It wasn’t just crypto deals that Eric Trump secured during his recent trip to the Middle East. This month, the Trump Organization – a conglomerate of more than 500 companies – announced three Trump-branded real estate projects, including a $5.5bn deal to build a beachside golf resort in Qatar made up of a 7km-long entertainment district, an 18-hole golf course and a “Land of Legends” theme park. The deal is led by Qatari Diar, a real estate company owned by the country’s sovereign wealth fund.

The Trumps have a stake in a similar project in Oman, which has drawn scrutiny for its treatment of workers, and in the past months they’ve signed property deals with Dar Global, a developer with ties to the Saudi Arabian government, in Jeddah, Riyadh and Dubai.

While Eric was in the Middle East, Don Jr visited Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia to expand his family’s business network, including by announcing plans to build a Trump hotel in Belgrade. The hotel project is backed by the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was founded by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. (Kushner left the White House in 2021; since then Affinity Partners has received large investments from governments including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to invest in global real estate and tech. Last year its assets grew 60% to $4.8 billion.)

Twenty Trump-branded real estate projects will be developed in foreign countries during Trump’s second term as president, including in India, Uruguay, Oman and Vietnam, according to CREW.

“In the American experience, we have never had a president with such egregious conflicts of interest since the civil war,” says Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush. Experts are concerned that Trump Organization dealings might influence foreign policy. 

Ethics lawyers say Trump’s outside business interests could represent a violation of the US Constitution’s “emoluments clause”, which is designed to prevent government officials from receiving gifts, payments, or other benefits. Here, the president is not exempt. Several lawsuits filed during his first term alleged that he violated that clause, but those suits were dropped when he left office.