Trump - Corruption

Tariffs make this sort of thing easy. 

Does Anybody Care This Is the Worst Bribery Scandal Since Teapot Dome? 

The UAE put $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, then got export restrictions lifted on AI chips. Nothing to see here, move along.

 

In May, Zach Witkoff, the 32-year-old son of the billionaire Steve Witkoff, announced at a Dubai conference—while sitting beside Eric Trump—that he’d collected $2 billion from one Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who controls the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates. That $2 billion purchased a stablecoin called USD1 from World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm of which Witkoff père et fils are co-founders, and in which the Trump family owns a 60 percent stake. It was, according to Binance (another participant in the deal), “the single largest investment into a crypto company” that the world had ever seen.

Around the same time that Zach announced the UAE investment, his father, Steve Witkoff, said he was divesting his own stake in World Liberty Financial. Four months later, though, the White House says Witkoff is “still in the process of divesting.” (High-ranking Trump officials are notorious slowpokes in this regard.)

What was worth $2 billion to UAE? By what we’re supposed to believe is sheerest coincidence, two weeks after Zach Witkoff announced Sheik Tahnoon’s stablecoin purchase, President Donald Trump agreed to allow the UAE to import a large quantity of U.S.-produced AI computer chips, with many of those chips going to a company named G42 that just happens to be controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon. Previously, the Biden administration had sharply limited how many such chips could go to UAE because the country conducted joint military exercises with China, with which G42 had multiple business partnerships. The UAE didn’t like being told no, so after Trump entered office it negotiated a better deal—with, among others, Steve Witkoff.