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Trump Family Inc: how the US president and his clan ushered in a new golden age of corruption
The Observer
|May 11, 2025
The presidency and personal gain now go hand in hand - and no one has been able to do anything about it, reports Patricia Clarke
Over the course of the last eight months, Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire best known for paying $6.2m for a banana at an art auction, made another series of unusual investments. He spent $75m buying crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLF), a firm backed by the Trump family.
Five weeks after Donald Trump became president, the US securities regulator shelved a civil fraud case against Sun that could have cost him millions in fines and repayments.
When it was founded last year, WLF promised to liberate Americans from "the big banks and financial elites". The firm listed President Trump as "chief crypto advocate"; his sons as "visionaries and ambas-sadors"; and the two sons of his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, as cofounders. Witkoff Sr was listed as "cofounder emeritus".
Now the Trumps, the Witkoffs and Sun - the banana-buyer - are in business together. Sitting beside Sun and Eric Trump at a crypto con-ference in Dubai this month, Zach Witkoff, Steve's son, announced a new deal. It involved a crypto token called Tron, whose price Sun had been accused of manipulating in the shelved fraud case.
"Tron is just an incredible tech-nology," Witkoff Jr said, "and we're lucky to be partners with you." There is every chance that a WLF-Tron partnership will enrich Sun, President Trump, his family and the family of his advisers.
Every president since Lyndon Johnson has chosen to sell his investments before taking office or seal them in a blind trust - except Trump. Forbes estimates that his personal wealth has more than doubled to $5.1bn in the past year. Trump profited from his businesses during his first term too, but sources say the majority of his net worth is in new schemes launched in the past year - deals, often facilitated by his sons, in crypto, real estate, media and the use of Trump's exist-ing assets including hotels and his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
This story is from the May 11, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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