President Donald Trump is using the power of his office for personal financial gain like no other president in history, recent investigations of his finances reveal.
Relying on financial documents disclosed during his 2024 civil fraud trial, The New York Times discovered that Trump has rebounded from a shaky financial period prior to his reelection in November when most of his real estate ventures were losing money and a wave of legal judgments threatened to consume all of his cash.
Since then, Trump and his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have refocused the family business on a series of foreign development deals, cryptocurrency partnerships and licensing deals leveraging the family name that have more than doubled his net worth to at least $5 billion and possibly as much as $10 billion.
And as the president and the Trump Organization are raking in cash from these new ventures, the Trump administration is removing many of the guardrails of oversight designed to prevent self-dealing and conflicts of interest.
“He is president and supposed to be working in the public’s interest,” James Thurber, an emeritus professor at American University with expertise on lobbying, campaign finance and political corruption told AP News. “Instead, he is helping his own personal interest to grow his wealth. It’s totally not normal.”
While Trump’s office tower on 40 Wall Street in Manhattan and most of his 14 golf course resort properties have lost money in recent years, bringing his cash on hand to between $300 million and $400 million in 2023, his wealth is now built on monetizing the family name and the office of presidency in new ways, the Times reported.
After he clinched the Republican nomination, the Trump organization announced nine foreign development and licensing deals, including a golf resort in Qatar, residential towers in Dubai, Riyadh, and Jeddah, and other licensing deals in Vietnam and Serbia.
These real estate developments often involve licensing the Trump name for glitzy hotels and residences, including in those Middle Eastern countries where the U.S. has allies and political interests, Bloomberg noted.
In its deal with Trump International Oman, which includes a hotel, golf courses and residences, the Trump Organization is profiting from a deal linked to the government of Oman, a U.S. ally.
The project, developed by Dar Global, the international arm of Saudi real estate giant Dar Al Arkan in partnership with Oman’s state-owned tourism group, advertises “hands-off investment expertly managed by Trump while you generate income passively,” Bloomberg reported, observing that Oman has been playing a central role in high-stakes nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Trump is not required to divulge the full amount promised to him in any of his licensing deals, only what he takes in annually, including management fees, the Times noted. What information he has released indicates the Trumps have raised the price for use of their name — Trump’s fees in licensing contracts rose from $750,000 to $1 million during his television celebrity years to $5 million in more recent foreign deals, according to tax and financial disclosure forms.
Cryptocurrency is the Trump family’s biggest cash cow at present.
One of Trump’s cryptocurrencies, the $Trump meme coin, is estimated to have earned at least $320 million in fees since January, according to Chainalysis, a crypto analytics firm, while another received a $2 billion investment from a United Arab Emirates-controlled wealth fund founded by a convicted felon, reported AP News. A third has sold at least $550 million in tokens.
Trump has pledged to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the world” and promised to roll back oversight of the industry.
Earlier this month he signed cryptocurrency legislation approved by Congress which includes regulations aimed at making a specific kind of digital currency called stablecoins more accessible and mainstream. It also bans members of Congress from using their own brand of stablecoins. The ban does not extend to the president.
Last year Trump announced the launch of his own crypto coin, $WLFI, and World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm to be run by his sons and several business associates, reported AP News. Among those associates was Steve Witkoff, now one of Trump’s top diplomatic envoys in the Middle East. The coin was not initially successful, but sales took off after Trump’s election in November, reaching over $550 million by year’s end. Trump made $57 million off the crypto coin in its first quarter, according to a financial disclosure.
In another move to capitalize on the Trump brand while in office, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. recently took an active role in launching a new U.S.-based manufacturing-focused SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company), according to the Wall Street Journal. The brothers are serving as advisers and hold shares in the SPAC, which aims to raise $100 million. Critics say the move raises ethical concerns, as it opens another financial pipeline for the Trump family to benefit from ventures whose success may hinge on their father’s influence.
During his first term, Trump “gave a nod toward ethics,” AP noted, issuing a moratorium on foreign deals, and while shunning the tradition of past presidents placing their assets in a blind trust, he handed control of the Trump Organization over to his children while still keeping his financial holdings close.
In his second term, his sons Eric and Donald Jr. are running the business while Trump is in office, emboldened by last summer’s Supreme Court ruling that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution. And though the White House says the president is not involved in its day-to-day decisions, the financial trust he has established continues to profit, and Trump openly promotes his resorts, crypto ventures and branded merchandise (including Trump bibles, $400 gold-colored shoes and cellphones) while in the White House and on his Truth Social account.
In the midst of raking in unprecedented wealth for his family while in office, Trump is feeling a bit generous. On Wednesday, he proudly shared on his Truth Social platform that he was the only president “with the exception of the Late, Great George Washington” to donate his salary. “My first ‘Paycheck’ went to the White House Historical Association, as we make much needed renovations to the beautiful ‘People’s House,” he wrote.
Trump’s presidential pay amounts to $400,000 annually, a drop in the bucket and a symbolic gesture compared to the hundreds of millions he’s generated from crypto, foreign licensing deals, luxury merchandise, and real estate ventures while in office.
The post drew swift backlash, including from the conservative watchdog group Republicans Against Trump, which responded: “The most corrupt president in history cashed in hundreds of millions from Bibles, cologne, crypto, global real estate deals, and a $400M jet from Qatar. Now he’s boasting about donating his salary. Shameless.”
“President Trump has been the most transparent president in history in all respects, including when it comes to his finances,” a White House spokesperson told Bloomberg. “President Trump handed over his multibillion-dollar empire in order to serve our country, and he has sacrificed greatly. President Trump has disclosed his financial holdings through his annual financial disclosure report and he will continue to do so.”
Much of Trump’s current holdings are not liquid, and the value of cryptocurrency is subject to wildly swinging market whims. Trump Media, the parent company of his social media network Truth Social, continues to lose money and struggles to produce a scanty $1 million in quarterly revenue, the Times noted.
Trump also has to contend with legal judgments of more than $600 million against him — $355 million from the civil fraud trial and $88 million in the sexual abuse and defamation suits brought by writer E. Jean Caroll, both of which he’s appealing. So far he has only had to pay $175 million in the fraud case and to post bonds totaling $97 million in Carroll’s cases.
“His approach to almost everything at this point now seems to be that he’s going to get away with whatever he can get away with, and sort of dare people to try to find legal or political ways to stop him,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of the liberal-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
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