| Circle, the company the suit is filed for, says it never asked for it. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 4 MIN / 3 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE WLF-EMOL |
|
| What would your boss say if a foreign official's investment firm wired your family's company $500 million? |
| I can tell you what a shareholder in Circle says should happen. Circle is the company behind USDC, a stablecoin. In plain English, a stablecoin is a digital dollar meant to be backed one-for-one by cash and Treasurys. The Trump family's World Liberty Financial sells a rival one called USD1... and that rivalry is now a federal case. |
| On Oct. 22, J. Benjamin Greenberg filed suit in federal court in Washington. Greenberg worked at Circle from 2016 to 2018, and he still holds 10,000 shares. His complaint says two deals tied to the United Arab Emirates broke the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause. That's the rule that bars a federal officeholder from taking payments from a foreign state unless Congress consents. |
|
$500 million, four days before the oath |
|
| Let me walk you through the first deal. Aryam Investment 1 agreed on Jan. 16, 2025, to pay $500 million for 49% of World Liberty. The complaint ties Aryam to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser. It says $187 million of the upfront half went to two Trump family entities, and that about $75.5 million more reached them after the inauguration. |
|
| "He needs to be held accountable." |
| J. BENJAMIN GREENBERG, VIA SPECTRUM NEWS |
|
|
| So put yourself on the other side of that table. You're a foreign official, and you'd like a friend in the White House. Lobbying for one could take years... or your firm could buy 49% of his family's crypto company four days before he's sworn in. That's the deal the suit describes. |
|
|
| The second deal is four times bigger. MGX is an Abu Dhabi investment fund, and Tahnoon chairs it. When MGX bought a $2 billion stake in Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, it paid in USD1. Every one of those dollars sat in the President's family's stablecoin. |
| Here's why that matters to Circle. A stablecoin company holds your cash, invests it in Treasurys and keeps the interest. The complaint says that interest made up about 96% of Circle's 2025 revenue. It puts Circle's lost income on the MGX money at $70 million to $82 million a year. |
| FILED / COMPLAINT, GREENBERG V. TRUMP |
|
| Filed Oct. 22, 2026, in U.S. District Court in Washington as case 1:26-cv-03686. It names Trump, World Liberty, four Trump-linked holding companies and envoy Steve Witkoff, with Circle as a nominal defendant. It asks the court to declare the payments unconstitutional, order an accounting and send the proceeds to the U.S. Treasury. |
|
| Circle wants no part of it. A company spokesperson says Circle did not start, direct, authorize or join the filing. World Liberty calls the claims without merit, and the White House calls the case frivolous and says there are no conflicts of interest. |
|
120 million tokens from Binance |
|
| Now look at what happened last week. Binance opened a new rewards pool on Oct. 29, and it runs through Nov. 26. The exchange is handing out 120 million WLFI tokens and up to 2.5 million USD1 to customers who simply hold USD1. WLFI is World Liberty's own token. In plain English, the exchange that took the UAE's $2 billion is now paying its users to keep cash in the family's coin. |
| And Binance already has history with this White House. Trump pardoned its founder, Changpeng Zhao, in October 2025, and Greenberg's filing raises that pardon too. The court docket shows one entry so far, the complaint itself, which means no defendant has answered yet. |
| So what's your stake? The emoluments clause is yours. It says a foreign government can't put money in a President's pocket unless your representatives in Congress vote to allow it. Greenberg says Congress never gave that consent. Emoluments suits from Trump's first term recovered nothing, according to Quartz. This one asks the court to send the proceeds to the U.S. Treasury... which is to say, to you. |
