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The Trump family secretly entered into a $500 million cryptocurrency agreement with a influential Abu Dhabi royal just a few days priorDonald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

A secret deal that transferred almost $200 million to entities connected to Trump, which was then followed by the US providing a foreign nation with extensive access to confidential information.artificial intelligence technology.

The agreement, associated with the cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial supported by Trump, was finalized on January 16, 2025, byEric Trumpand executives associated with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security advisor and brother of the nation’s president.

The previously unknown agreement was verified bythe Wall Street Journal, company records and others who are aware of the situation.

The deal resulted in a foreign government official becoming the biggest shareholder in a company connected to the US president. This action is without precedent in recent American politics, sparking concerns about potential conflicts of interest and the impact of foreign entities.

The purchaser was Aryam Investment 1, a firm managed by Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the region’s leading influential individuals.

The deal gave Aryam a 49 percent ownership share in World Liberty for $500 million – with $250 million paid right away, and $187 million from that initial paymenttargeted at Trump family entities, as stated in documents examined by the Journal.

Tahnoon, who acts as the UAE’s national security advisor and manages a vast business empire valued at over $1.3 trillion, has consistently been regarded with distrust within Washington’s intelligence and national security communities.

He oversees the influential AI and surveillance company G42, which faced attention during the Biden administration due to its previous connections with China’s Huawei and other Chinese technology firms.

American authorities had consistently prevented or limited the United Arab Emirates from obtaining cutting-edge U.S. artificial intelligence chips, worried that the advanced technology might be redirected to Beijing.

During Trump’s tenure, the door was reopened. In March, Tahnoon met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office along with senior administration officials, where he conveyed a desire to enhance collaboration on AI and technology, according to individuals aware of the talks.

Only two months later, the Trump administration approved a plan enabling the UAE to obtain approximately 500,000 cutting-edge AI chips each year, according to the Journal, a quantity sufficient to establish one of the largest data center clusters globally.

In public, the agreement was praised as a tactical success for American technology firms.

In secret, only a small number of people were aware that Tahnoon’s representatives had already obtained a significant financial interest in Trump’s cryptocurrency project.

When learning about the agreement, Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy expressed his disgust on Sunday night through a tweet, calling it ‘Stunning corruption.’

Trump overturned years of national security concerns regarding the sale of advanced AI chips to the UAE. National security specialists were shocked. However, there was a hidden aspect. Prior to the agreement, the UAE had transferred $187 million to the Trumps and $31 million to the Witkoffs through secret payments. “Incredible corruption,” Murphy stated.

During the time of the January agreement, World Liberty Financial did not have any active products in operation.

Its sole source of income was the sale of a token known as WLFI, which had generated roughly $82 million, but the Aryam investment transformed everything.

As per company documents, the agreement led to instant multimillion-dollar payments to entities connected to Trump, along with businesses linked to the family of Steve Witkoff, a long-time associate of Trump and the newly named Middle East envoy.

Two top executives from G42, Martin Edelman and Peng Xiao, were also included on World Liberty’s five-member board, as reported by the Journal, along with Eric Trump and Zach Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff and CEO of World Liberty.

The new members of the board and the details of its biggest shareholder remained undisclosed by World Liberty.

Disclosures on the company’s website later revealed that the Trump family’s share had decreased from 75 percent to 38 percent, indicating that a significant portion was sold — though the buyer remained unidentified.

Several weeks prior to the official announcement of the US–UAE chip agreement, Zach Witkoff took the stage in Dubai and disclosed that MGX, a fund under Tahnoon’s control, would utilize World Liberty’s newly launched stablecoin, USD1, to finalize a $2 billion investment in Binance.

The action quickly elevated USD1 to the upper echelon of global stablecoins, providing World Liberty with a $2 billion cash reserve, which the company now allocates into US Treasury bonds—yielding tens of millions in interest.

Neither company revealed that MGX and World Liberty had overlapping leadership or that both were managed by executives associated with Tahnoon.

Legal professionals and ex-government ethics officials characterized the series of occurrences as highly volatile.

“This definitely appears to be a breach of the foreign emoluments clause, and more specifically, it seems like a bribe,” said Kathleen Clark toWSJ.coma former ethics attorney from Washington, D.C.

Ty Cobb, who worked as a senior White House attorney during Trump’s initial term, was direct.

My recommendation, as an expert in ethics law, would have been straightforward: You avoid entering into business agreements with the families of foreign leaders. This undermines American foreign policy.

The presidential residence has refuted any disagreement.

President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American people,” said spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “There are no conflicts of interest.

White House legal advisor David Warrington stated, “The President is not involved in business transactions that could affect his constitutional duties.”

A representative from World Liberty stated that the agreement did not provide any governmental access or control.

“We concluded the transaction in question because we firmly believe it was the best decision for our company,” said spokesman David Wachsman toThe Journal. “We follow the same rules and guidelines as other companies in our industry.”

A person acquainted with Tahnoon’s investments mentioned that the sheikh examined World Liberty’s proposals for several months, and that “at no point during this investigation or afterward was the investment brought up with President Trump.”

A representative from the Trump Organization stated that the company “places great importance on its ethical responsibilities and is strongly dedicated to avoiding conflicts of interest,” and follows all relevant legal requirements.

Tahnoon had previously been engaged in business with Trump’s close associates.

His companies previously allocated $1.5 billion to a company led by Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter.

Shortly following Trump’s inauguration, Tahnoon’s MGX was revealed as an investor in a $500 billion AI data center initiative involvingOpenAI and SoftBank – a partnership that Trump personally supported from the White House.

By September, MGX was chosen as one of the companies permitted to manage TikTok’s operations in the United States.

A month later, Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance.A maneuver that faced strong disapproval from Democrats, who claimed the president was offering access to affluent international entities.

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