Trump says he knows ‘nothing about’ UAE-linked investment in World Liberty Financial
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The situation raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest and constitutional violations, impacting governance and investor trust.
The president calls himself a co-owner of the crypto firm but says its Abu Dhabi deals happened without his knowledge
Mon 9 Nov 2026 · 05:47 EST · 3 min read
In Politics
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Donald Trump says he co-owns World Liberty Financial. He also says he knows “nothing about” the UAE-linked money that flowed into it.
Trump made both claims during a 60 Minutes interview on November 8, 2026. Taken together, they amount to owning the house while insisting you’ve never met the people who bought half of it.
The timing matters. The comments arrive weeks after a shareholder lawsuit accused the arrangement of breaching the Constitution. They also come as the firm’s governance token trades at a sliver of its former value.
The deals Trump says he didn’t follow
The scrutiny centers on two transactions, both tied to Abu Dhabi and both very large.
The first came in January 2025. Aryam Investment 1 paid $500 million for a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial (WLFI).
Aryam is linked to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The deal was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son, just days before the inauguration.
According to the research findings, a notable share of the proceeds was redirected to Trump family entities. Put simply, a foreign-linked buyer’s money didn’t just stay inside the company.
The second deal landed in May 2025 and was even bigger. MGX, another Abu Dhabi fund chaired by Tahnoon, bought $2 billion worth of USD1, WLFI’s stablecoin.
A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to hold a steady value, typically pegged one-to-one to the US dollar. MGX used that USD1 to settle an investment in Binance, the crypto exchange.
A lawsuit and a sliding token
Those connections are now the subject of litigation. On October 22, 2026, a shareholder of Circle Internet Group filed suit over the UAE deals.
The lawsuit alleges the transactions violate the Foreign Emoluments Clause. That is the constitutional provision restricting federal officeholders from accepting benefits from foreign governments.
The suit claims the deals delivered illegal benefits to Trump. It also alleges they disadvantaged the value of USDC, the stablecoin Circle issues.
None of these allegations have been proven. They are claims in a complaint, and the case is still at an early stage.
Meanwhile, the money involved is not small. Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related revenue.
Almost $800 million of that was attributed to WLFI.
The token side of the business tells a different story. The WLFI governance token traded around 45 cents in August 2025.
By June 2026, it had fallen to roughly 5 cents.
The hands-off defense
Trump’s position is consistent with what he has said before. He maintains that he stays away from day-to-day operations and leaves management to his sons.
The 49% stake sale was signed by Eric Trump, and the revenue shows up on the president’s own financial disclosure.
Not knowing the details of a deal is one thing. Profiting from it is a separate question, and that question is the one the Emoluments Clause is concerned with.
World Liberty Financial launched as the Trump family’s flagship crypto venture. It combined a governance token with a dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD1, and quickly drew interest from large investors.
The UAE money became the most consequential of those relationships. A $500 million equity purchase and a $2 billion stablecoin transaction gave Abu Dhabi-linked entities a substantial footprint in a company partly owned by the sitting president.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.