Donald Trump

Four days before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time, his son Eric helped sign away nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the crypto company the Trumps run with the family of Steve Witkoff. The buyer, a company called Aryam Investment 1, paid $500 million for 49 percent. Half the money came upfront: about $187 million to Trump family entities and at least $31 million to the Witkoffs, according to the Wall Street Journal, which uncovered the deal a year later. Behind Aryam stood Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser and the brother of its president.

On May 1, 2025, Zach Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder, announced that a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, would be paid in USD1, the digital dollar World Liberty had launched weeks earlier. The investor was MGX, a fund Tahnoon chairs. A digital dollar earns money for its issuer on every dollar parked in it, and Tahnoon's fund chose to route $2 billion through this one.

Two weeks later, the White House approved a framework letting the Emirates import up to 500,000 of Nvidia's best chips a year, a fifth of them reserved for G42, Tahnoon's artificial intelligence company. Witkoff and David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto adviser, backed it, The New York Times reported. Two weeks after that, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its case against Binance.

In October 2025, Trump pardoned Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao. Zhao had pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering program.

While Zhao was seeking clemency, according to the Wall Street Journal, a Binance team was negotiating business with World Liberty. Seven weeks after the pardon, Binance added USD1 trading pairs and moved collateral on its platform into the coin.

In July 2026, the Emirates moved into the top tier of American export partners, which lets approved Emirati companies receive advanced chips without even applying for a license. The Commerce Department's own staff warned that wider access raised the risk the technology would leak to America's adversaries, E&E News reported. The administration went ahead anyway, and its rule credited the Emirates with "a key role advancing U.S. interests during Operation Epic Fury," the war on Iran.

In August 2026, federal regulators conditionally approved a national trust bank for World Liberty. The Comptroller of the Currency refused to delay the charter and wouldn't say whether the company had disclosed its foreign owner; the approval names neither Tahnoon nor his stake. Tahnoon and his co-investors own 49 percent of the bank's parent company, the Journal reported. As of October 2026, the bank was still waiting on final approval.

On April 26, 2025, World Liberty signed a letter of intent with the Pakistan Crypto Council, a body set up under Pakistan's finance ministry. On May 10, Trump announced the India-Pakistan ceasefire. In June he hosted Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan's army chief, for lunch at the White House, the first time a US president had received a Pakistani army chief who wasn't also head of state. Pakistan nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. In July its tariff was set at 19 percent. In January 2026, a week after World Liberty applied for its bank charter, Pakistan's finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, signed a memorandum with a World Liberty affiliate to explore using USD1 for cross-border payments. Six months later, there had been no pilot, no licenses and no transactions, officials told Al Jazeera.

On April 30, 2025, Qatari Diar, the real estate arm of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, signed with the Trump Organization and the Saudi developer Dar Global to build a $5.5 billion golf resort on the coast north of Doha. The Trump family's licensing fee: $5.25 million.

Two weeks later, Trump was in Doha. Qatar Airways ordered up to 210 Boeing jets, and the emir's government offered the president a Boeing 747-8 to fly as Air Force One. The Pentagon took it on May 21, 2025. The legal green light came from Pam Bondi, then the attorney general.

A memorandum signed in July 2025 by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Qatar's minister of state for defense affairs accepts the plane as an "unconditional donation," ABC News reported after reviewing it. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi concluded that the gift could be conditioned on transferring the plane to Trump's presidential library foundation by Jan. 1, 2029, about three weeks before he leaves office, CBS News reported. The Pentagon calls it a gift to the United States. As of October 2026, taxpayers were covering the refit, which the Air Force says cost less than $400 million and Democratic senators put above $1 billion.

After Israel bombed Hamas leaders in Doha on Sept. 9, 2025, Netanyahu apologized to Qatar's prime minister by phone from the White House, at Trump's insistence. That same day, Trump signed an executive order treating an armed attack on Qatar as a threat to the United States, to be answered with "diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military" measures.

The Trump Organization announced 13 foreign projects in nine countries after the 2024 election and took in about $117 million in foreign revenue in its first year back, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Indonesia's government halted a Trump-linked resort project in February 2025.

In May 2025, while Vietnam was negotiating its tariff rate with Washington, its government approved a $1.5 billion Trump golf resort outside Hanoi. In June 2026, local authorities enforced farmland evictions to clear the site, Bloomberg reported.

In Syria, Mohamad Khayyat, whose brothers' company, UCC Holding, won some of the biggest Syrian reconstruction deals, proposed a golf course on Syria's coast near Latakia; Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina suggested naming it after Trump.

On Oct. 31, 2025, a company called Skyline Builders agreed to pay $20 million for 20 percent of the company that holds a Kazakh tungsten project, which its developer calls the world's largest known undeveloped deposit. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had been buying stakes in Skyline through a shell company, the Financial Times reported. Six days later, Kazakhstan signed a critical-minerals agreement with the United States and announced it would join the Abraham Accords. The same day, the project announced that two US government lenders, the Export-Import Bank and the Development Finance Corporation, had signaled interest in financing it; together they have signaled up to $1.6 billion. The New York Times has counted at least 14 critical-minerals projects or companies with ties to the Trump or Lutnick families that have received, or are seeking, more than $8.9 billion in federal support.

In March 2026, Powerus, a Florida drone maker, announced a deal that could give Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. sizable equity stakes. By April, it was pitching drone interceptors to Gulf states under Iranian attack, The Associated Press reported.

On Nov. 18, 2025, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman left the White House with the promise of major non-NATO ally status, formally designated in January 2026, which moves a country to the front of the line for American weapons and military cooperation, and clearance to buy F-35s, America's most advanced fighter jet, which no Arab country has ever received. The next day, Commerce approved Humain, his state AI company, to buy the same volume of chips as G42.

Fifty-five days after the crown prince's visit, the Trump Organization announced two Saudi projects: a $1 billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah and a Trump golf club outside Riyadh, built with a company the Saudi sovereign fund owns.

On May 18, 2026, Trump wrote that the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had asked him "to hold off on our planned Military attack" on Iran. On Aug. 1, after Mohammed bin Salman raised concerns in a call, Trump called off another strike, writing that Iran and "other Middle Eastern Countries" had asked him to while a deal was worked out. "And frankly, Saudi Arabia didn't want it either," he said the next day.

On May 25, 2026, as a deal with Iran took shape, Trump posted: "I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords." The process, he wrote, "should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar." He allowed that "one or two" countries might have a reason not to sign, "and that will be accepted," but said that those who didn't "should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention." On May 27, at a Cabinet meeting, he turned to his envoy: "Steve, are you going to get them to sign?" Trump added: "I'm not sure we should make the deal if they don't sign — you want to know the truth." Also on May 27, he said of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and the others: "I think they owe that to us, to be honest."

On July 22, 2026, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a nuclear cooperation agreement that, according to an administration memo seen by NPR, would give American companies priority to supply reactors and fuel for a Saudi nuclear power program. The next day, Trump wrote that it "will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords." Karoline Leavitt, then the White House press secretary, said the deal "is contingent on this condition, as far as the president is concerned."

In September 2026, Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice urging American strikes on the Houthis, Axios reported. Trump declined, and US officials said there was no intention of direct military action "at this time."

"We're going to run it," Trump said of Venezuela on Jan. 3, 2026, the day of the raid in which American forces seized Nicolás Maduro. Under an executive order Trump signed that month, the proceeds of Venezuelan oil sales are treated as the Venezuelan government's property, held by the United States "solely in a custodial and governmental capacity." In July he floated sending Venezuela's oil money to the American military. It "can go to the military, Congress has to approve it," he said, and suggested Congress pass a law allowing it. By late July, Trump put the total taken in above $13 billion. In most of the eight deals traced, the stake belongs to an American agency, not to a person, and nothing in the record shows Trump, Witkoff or Kushner pocketing a share.

On March 12, 2026, with oil at $100 a barrel, Trump posted: "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money." In May, talking about seized Iranian oil, Trump said: "It's a very profitable business." He also said: "We're like pirates."

On Oct. 24, 2026, at a campaign rally in Perry, Ga., Trump told the crowd that the country "is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what's happened in the Middle East." He said his staff had asked him not to say so: "My people said, 'Please don't mention that, sir, because people are paying a little higher,'" he said, according to The Associated Press. "But I said I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it. We're making a freaking fortune."

On Oct. 9, 2026, shortly after Trump announced a diesel deal reached in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Treasury cleared Russian diesel sales until April 2027, in what the AP called "an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections."

On March 23, 2026, between 6:49 and 6:50 a.m. New York time, about $580 million in oil futures changed hands, the Financial Times found. About 15 minutes later, Trump posted that the United States had been having "productive conversations" with Iran and paused his threat to strike its power plants. Oil prices fell sharply. In May, ABC News reported that the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were examining bets placed shortly before four market-moving announcements about the war, three of them Trump's. As of October 2026, neither the commission nor the Justice Department had announced charges.

On Oct. 8, 2026, Trump promised that "we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd," and wrote that "the Blockade will remain in full force and effect." The Israeli military had been ready that same weekend to strike Iran's nuclear sites, regime sites and energy plants, the Financial Times reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. Trump, they said, decided not to restart the war before the midterms.

On Feb. 4, 2025, beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said: "The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too." He added: "We'll own it." It could become, he said, "the Riviera of the Middle East." Asked who would live there, he answered: "the world's people." Asked in an interview aired six days later whether Palestinians would have the right to return, he said: "No, they wouldn't, because they're going to have much better housing." He added: "I'm talking about building a permanent place for them." The next day, with King Abdullah II of Jordan beside him, he said: "I believe we'll have a parcel of land in Jordan. I believe we'll have a parcel of land in Egypt." The king afterward restated that Jordan was "steadfast" in its "position against the displacement of Palestinians."

"Nobody is going to be forced to leave," Trump said of Gaza in October 2025, echoing his peace plan.

The Board of Peace charter, signed at Davos in January 2026, puts Trump in charge personally. He can be replaced only if he resigns or is incapacitated, according to the charter. He names his own successor. He alone invites member states, and he can expel them unless two-thirds object. Membership is limited to three years unless Trump, as chairman, renews it, but the charter exempts any member state that pays more than $1 billion in cash within the first year. Though the board was set up to oversee Gaza's transition, its charter never mentions Gaza: it creates a standing international body that Trump will chair whether or not he is president. At Davos, Trump said: "Look at this beautiful piece of property." He added: "I'm a real estate person at heart."

At the board's first meeting, on Feb. 19, 2026, Trump pledged $10 billion in US money, without saying whether Congress had approved it. Qatar and Saudi Arabia each pledged exactly $1 billion, just short of the charter's bar. By April, less than $1 billion of the roughly $17 billion pledged had arrived, from the UAE, Morocco and the United States, Reuters reported.

In June 2026, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the State Department had confirmed in a briefing to Congress that the board "had not established the rules and procedures governing the oversight and monitoring of funds." She asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio whether the board could use US funds to pay Trump, as its chairman, while he is president or after he leaves office, her office said.

Isabela Herrera gave $2.5 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. in late 2024, while her father, the banker Julio Herrera Velutini, faced federal felony charges. In May 2025, a senior Trump appointee authorized a plea to a single misdemeanor over the objections of career prosecutors, The New York Times reported. She gave $1 million more. In January 2026, Trump pardoned him.

Trevor Milton, the founder of Nikola, and his wife gave about $1.8 million before his pardon in March 2025, which ended prosecutors' bid for about $660 million in restitution for the investors a jury found he had defrauded. Paul Walczak was pardoned less than three weeks after his mother attended a $1 million-a-plate dinner for Trump.

Trump signed the law that opened the files. He had opposed the bill for months, the AP reported, before Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act almost unanimously. He signed it on Nov. 19, 2025.

In March 2026, NPR counted 37 pages of records, including FBI interview notes, tied to an allegation against Trump that the Justice Department still had not published.