Abu Dhabi royals signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in Trump’s crypto venture for half a billion dollars. The stake was purchased four days before the US President Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration last year. The agreement was between the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) and a group of investors backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the national security adviser of the UAE. According to the reports, the deal was signed by Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organisation.
What Triggered the Scrutiny
The timing of the deal has sparked ethical concerns and scrutiny of the intersection between Trump family business interests and administration policy. When asked about the terms of the agreement, the timing, and the size of investment, Mr Wachsman said that they agreed to the deal because they strongly believed that it would contribute to the growth of the company. However, the Trump family’s business dealings with the Emirates have blurred the line between governments and private enterprises, thus alarming ethics experts and congressional Democrats.
Months after the agreement, the US agreed to allow the UAE to purchase hundreds of thousands of advanced artificial intelligence chips from the American chipmaker, Nvidia. This agreement allowed for a fifth of the chips to go to Tahnoon’s own AI company, G42. Aryam Investment, the Tahnoon-backed company that acquired 49% stake in WLF, makes Aryam the largest shareholder and the only known investor of the company besides its founders. USD 1 is the stablecoin backed by World Liberty, the company that counts on Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff as co-founders, which means it will be run by both families.
Furthermore, during a trip to the Gulf last May, Trump and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan revealed plans to build a new group of artificial intelligence data centres outside the US. A planned 10sq mile UAE-US AI campus in Abu Dhabi that is expected to have 5 GW of data centre power, which will be equivalent to more than 2 million of AI chipmaker Nvidia’s latest generation of GB200 chips. This investment has raised more questions about the fusion of politics and business during Trump’s second term.
The Response to Mounting Concerns
The White House responded to the growing concerns and said that the president will only act for the betterment of the American public, also adding that he will not be involved in business deals affecting his constitutional duties. While Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, alleged that the new revelations provide evidence that the Trump family and Mr Witkoff had sold out the American nation to benefit the president’s crypto company. She posted on X that it is “corruption, plain and simple” She also called out the members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee to stop Trump’s crypto corruption. The names Warren cited include Steve Witkoff, David Sacks, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and other officials of the Trump administration. She asserted that they should testify in front of the congress on the mounting evidence of corruption.
