The Trump family’s cryptocurrency business just got a $2 billion investment from a firm backed by the United Arab Emirates government. The deal is rife with conflicts of interest.
Zach Witkoff—son of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and founder of the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial—announced the deal at a conference in Dubai on Thursday. He was accompanied by Eric Trump, who runs his family’s business.
The Emirati firm, MGX, will be using World Liberty Financial’s so-called stablecoin, USD1, to make a deal with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.
“We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” Witkoff said. “It’s only the beginning.”
This is a massive donation from a foreign government to the Trump family that will ultimately go toward a crypto exchange that has been monitored by the U.S. government for two years for money laundering. Binance’s billionaire founder, Changpeng Zhao, has not so coincidentally been pushing for a Trump pardon after he pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws.
With this deal, the Trump family will be enriched beyond most people’s comprehension, and they have the UAE government to thank for it. One can predict that Trump is likely to treat the country very favorably from here on out, again demonstrating that his power does have a price.
Trump changed his tune on cryptocurrency and used it to raise millions of dollars for his last campaign. His firm has been incredibly lucrative since, and as Witkoff said, it’s only the beginning. This current venture is an instance of Trump further thumbing his nose at our flimsy conflict of interest laws and selling his influence to the highest bidder.
Looks like Mike Waltz will land on his feet after being pushed out as national security adviser.
President Trump announced on Truth Social Thursday afternoon that he will be appointing Waltz as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio serving as national security adviser in the interim in addition to his other posts of acting administrator of USAID and acting archivist of the United States.
The move comes after Trump’s first choice for the ambassadorship, Representative Elise Stefanik, withdrew her name from consideration after the Republican majority in the House of Representatives became too thin. Waltz’s departure from his national security adviser post along with his deputy, Alex Wong, was announced earlier on Thursday following several scandals in the past few months.
Most notably, in March, Waltz accidentally invited Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal chat where Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth discussed attack plans against Houthi targets in Yemen. Later, Waltz was found to have left his Venmo account public, exposing associates including government officials and lobbyists. He was also exposed for having much of his personal data, including account passwords, cell phone numbers, and email addresses, listed online.
Along with Hegseth, Waltz used Signal frequently for work purposes, reportedly being part of at least 20 group chats to discuss issues in Ukraine, China, Gaza, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Privately, Trump was reportedly furious with Waltz’s missteps, but evidently not enough to push him out of the administration entirely.
Waltz’s new job seems to indicate that there are limits to accountability in the Trump administration. While he lost one job, he arguably got one that comes with less scrutiny. While the Signalgate scandal continues, for now it appears that the only consequences for the White House will be some chairs being shuffled.
This story has been updated.
Checking in on what other Republicans are up to
Laura Loomer sowed doubts about Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s departing national security adviser, during a meeting in the Oval Office last month that resulted in the dismissal of multiple staffers on the National Security Council.
In a podcast interview on The Tara Palmeri Show released Thursday, Trump’s favorite far-right conspiracy theorist said that she’d had concerns about Waltz’s loyalty after he signed off on the hiring of individuals who’d previously criticized the president.
In the infamous meeting where she presented her so-called evidence to support the firing of several more traditionally neoconservative foreign policy hawks, Loomer had wanted to present a supposedly damning video of Waltz to the president too. Loomer claimed she’d been unable to show the video to Trump because Waltz had entered the room, but she shared the video on Palmeri’s podcast.
