Trump Is Using the Presidency to Enrich Himself and His Family

The extent to which President Trump has used the office of the President to enrich himself and his family is unprecedented in American history. While there have been isolated examples of corruption in U.S. history, such as the 1922 Teapot Dome scandal in which administration officials accepted gifts and loans to influence oil production rights, they pale by comparison to the billions of dollars in wealth that President Trump and his family have accrued since the start of his second administration.

Here are the most obvious conflicts of interest during Trump’s presidency:

• President Trump is using his control of the Department of Justice to force taxpayers to pay him billions of dollars.
• In January, President Trump, his two sons and the Trump Organization sued the IRS over a contractor’s leak of his tax return to the New York Times in 2019. The suit seeks $10 billion in damages. President Trump has also filed a claim against the Department of Justice seeking $230 million as “compensation” for the Federal investigations into him following his first term.
• These claims are baseless, but they are being made to agencies that answer to President Trump. That means Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General and Trump’s former personal criminal defense lawyer, is responsible for defending the IRS and the DOJ against baseless claims made by his own boss.
• According to published reports, President Trump has nearly tripled his net worth since his second election from around $2.3 billion in 2024 to an estimated $6.5 billion now.
• Much of that wealth has come from crypto currency, starting with the release of $Trump meme coin shortly before his inauguration, to the operation World Liberty Financial, a crypto currency venture 60% owned by a Trump business entity. Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr. and Zach Witkoff, son of Presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, are actively involved in World Liberty’s operations. Last year, Zach Witkoff announced that an Emirati Sheikh had purchased $2 billion in stable coins from World Liberty. The Trump family receives 75% of net revenues from sales of World Liberty tokens, as well as 75% of net revenue generated by the platform. By December 2025 the Trump family had reportedly profited over $1 billion from proceeds of these revenue streams and held billions more in unsold tokens. Since World Liberty tokens have no intrinsic value, it is clear that these massive “investments are based on Trump’s holding of the office of the President.
• President Trump accepted the gift of a luxury 747 jet from the Qatari government with an estimated value of $400 million. The Department of Defense has added upgrades to the plane at a reported cost of $400 million. President Trump has said he will use the plane as a new Air Force One and then donate it to the Trump Presidential Library when his term ends. Meanwhile, it was reported last month that a Qatari owned company has invested in a Trump golf club and villa project being developed in Qatar. Revenues from Venezuela oil sales are also being deposited in a Qatari bank.
• The Pentagon has agreed to purchase an undisclosed number of drones from a firm with financial ties to Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. So, the Defense Department – another agency answering to the president – is enriching his family.
• President Trump will host the 2026 G20 summit at his Trump National Doral Miami Resort. It would violate a criminal statute and ethics regulations that prohibit conflicts of interest for government employees, except that Trump is exempt from such rules.
• Trump has issued numerous pardons to campaign donors and supporters. Since early 2025, the President has issued more than 1800 pardons. Many of those pardons were for participants in the January 6 insurrection, including those convicted of assaulting police officers. Other pardons were issued to people convicted of such serious felony crimes as bribery, securities fraud, financial theft, corporate fraud, and drug trafficking. Some of those pardoned contributed millions of dollars to the President’s political entities. In addition to the foregoing examples, on October 21, 2025, the President pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, the world’s largest crypto currency exchange. Binance reportedly purchased approximately 87% ($4.7 billion) of the total supply of stable coins issued by World Liberty Financial.
• A number of presidents have been criticized for misusing the pardon power, but the power’s use and abuse has never been as extensive or lucrative as by President Trump. And while the president is given pardon power by the Constitution, the Constitution expressly forbids bribery as an impeachable offense.
• These actions by President Trump and his family undermine and threaten basic democratic principles. The President takes an oath that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. This solemn promise is intended to ensure that the President works for the interests of the people, not for himself and his family. The framers also added two provisions to the Constitution prohibiting the President from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments, from the United States and from the states.

The framers believed that the President should not seek to enrich himself at the expense of the people. President Trump has violated this basic principle of the Rule of Law, while making himself and his family billions of dollars richer.