| The first $250 million arrived four days before the inauguration, and $187 million of it went to Trump family entities. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 4 MIN / 3 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE WLF-EMOL |
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| Has a foreign government ever paid you? |
| I'll guess it hasn't. But say you held federal office, and a king or a sheikh offered you money. The Constitution would make you ask Congress first. That rule is called the foreign emoluments clause. Put plainly, a federal officeholder can't take payments or gifts from a foreign state unless Congress says yes. |
| Last Thursday, October 22, a shareholder in the crypto company Circle sued in federal court in Washington. His claim is that President Trump skipped that step. And he puts the figure at more than $2 billion. Let me walk you through the paper... |
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$187 million, four days before the oath |
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| J. Benjamin Greenberg is the plaintiff. He worked at Circle as a software engineer from 2016 to 2018, and he still holds its stock. Two deals with the United Arab Emirates sit at the center of his complaint. |
| First comes a stake sale. An Abu Dhabi firm called Aryam Investment 1 agreed to pay $500 million for 49% of World Liberty Financial. That's the Trump family's crypto company. Eric Trump signed the deal four days before his father's inauguration, according to The Wall Street Journal. Half the money was paid up front. Of that first $250 million, about $187 million went to Trump family entities. |
| Aryam is backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Tahnoon serves as the UAE's national security adviser, and he's the brother of its president. |
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| No president in American history has profited from his office so brazenly. |
| J. BENJAMIN GREENBERG, VIA BLOOMBERG |
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| Deal number two is bigger. MGX, an Abu Dhabi fund that Tahnoon also chairs, put $2 billion into Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. And MGX paid with USD1, World Liberty's stablecoin. In plain English, that's a digital dollar meant to be backed one for one by cash and Treasurys. |
| Why would the payment method matter? Greenberg argues the deal raised the profile and value of USD1. So the president's family gains, because it owns a large stake in the company behind the coin. Disclosures from World Liberty put that stake at about 38% after the Aryam sale. |
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70 pages filed in Washington |
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| Read the filing and you'll find a narrower count of the president's own take. It says Trump received more than $75.5 million from the stake sale after he took office. |
| FILED / GREENBERG V. TRUMP, 1:26-CV-03686 |
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| Named as defendants are Trump, World Liberty, its holding companies, the family's DT Marks DEFI LLC and envoy Steve Witkoff. Relief requested includes a ruling that the profits are unconstitutional and an accounting of foreign payments. New foreign payments would be barred unless Congress consents. Disgorgement is on the list too, which in plain English means giving the profit back. |
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| What followed the money is in there too. During 2025, the Commerce Department approved sales of advanced Nvidia chips to an Abu Dhabi AI company Tahnoon chairs. Then came August 14 of this year. On that date, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave World Liberty a conditional trust bank charter. Conditional means a yes with conditions still to meet. |
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Envoy Steve Witkoff, also a defendant |
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| Here's the name I keep returning to. Steve Witkoff co-founded World Liberty, and he's also the president's special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff is a named defendant, accused of helping to arrange the payments. According to the Journal, at least $31 million of the first payment went to entities tied to his family. |
| World Liberty calls the claims meritless. Circle says one shareholder brought the case and the company played no part. And the White House told Spectrum News, "There are no conflicts of interest." Its spokesperson added that the president's assets sit in a trust. I checked the docket for Greenberg v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-03686 myself. So far it shows a single entry: the complaint, with eleven summonses attached. |
| Cases like this one have a poor record. Emoluments suits from Trump's first term never recovered a dollar, Bloomberg reported. None of them forced him to drop a business practice either... |
| So why should a fight between a crypto shareholder and a president matter to you? Because the clause was written for voters, and Circle is only the plaintiff this time. You get a vote, through your representatives, before a foreign government pays the man who runs your foreign policy. This complaint counts $75.5 million that arrived after the oath. But your representatives never voted on a cent of it. |
