President Donald Trump gets a $400,000 annual government salary, which he says he donates to worthy causes. But even if Trump kept the entire paycheck, it would be dwarfed by the billions of dollars flowing to him and his family via the Trump Organization, which operates Trump-branded properties, golf clubs, and other ventures; the Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs his Truth Social social media platform; and various cryptocurrency ventures. Many of Trump’s businesses struggled after he left the White House in 2021, according to internal Trump Organization documents seen by The New York Times. But since returning to the Oval Office, his wealth has skyrocketed, climbing to a record $7.3 billion, up from $4.3 billion just before the 2024 election, according to Forbes. Critics accuse Trump of turning the presidency into a cash cow and of erasing the line between the business of the nation and his own private businesses. “When it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits, Trump is a unicorn—no one else even comes close,” said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime Washington watchdog. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calls such accusations of profiteering “absurd” and insists “the president is abiding by all conflict-of-interest laws.”
Is he abiding by those laws?
(Image credit: Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images)
It’s murky, but what is clear is that Trump has departed from previous ethical norms. To avoid the appearance of self-dealing, Jimmy Carter famously turned over his Georgia peanut farm to a blind trust before entering the White House. In contrast, Trump in his first term entrusted control of his assets to sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and vowed that “no new deals” would be made by his real estate business while he was in office. He found other ways to make money. Just before his 2017 inauguration, the cost of membership at his Mar-a-Lago resort doubled to $200,000. (It’s now $1 million.) Foreign delegations, corporate lobbyists, and others seeking to curry favor with Trump invested in and booked stays at his properties; in the first three months of 2018, revenue from room rentals at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan climbed 13% thanks to bookings by the entourage of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. Officials from foreign governments such as China, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates collectively spent more than $750,000 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., over his first term. (He sold the property after leaving office.) “Isn’t it rude to come to [Trump’s] city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” one Asian diplomat told The Washington Post.
Were those payments legal?
They led to lawsuits from the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., and from an independent watchdog, who accused him of violating a constitutional prohibition on the president receiving gifts from foreign entities. But the cases were deemed moot by the Supreme Court in 2021 because he was no longer president. While campaigning for office in 2024, Trump launched a new company that would make it easier to receive such gifts: crypto trading platform World Liberty Financial. Co-founded with his sons and the family of Steve Witkoff—a real estate developer and now Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East—the company pays the Trumps up to 75% of the revenue from the sale of certain coins. The family’s stake in the firm is now thought to be worth $5 billion.
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Just before Inauguration Day, the Trump family launched two crypto memecoins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA. The value of both spiked and then crashed, but it’s estimated that the Trumps made $100 million in $TRUMP trading fees in less than two weeks. In May, Trump—who once called crypto “a scam”—invited the top 220 $TRUMP investors to a gala dinner at his golf club in Virginia. The top buyer, with nearly $20 million of $TRUMP, was Chinese-born crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who late last year spent $75 million on World Liberty Financial coins. In February, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped fraud charges against Sun. Meanwhile, Amazon is spending an unprecedented $40 million to license a documentary on Melania Trump; the first lady is expected to get at least $28 million of the fee. Other family members are also capitalizing on their proximity to power.
How are they benefiting?
Donald Jr. has co-founded the Executive Branch, a $500,000-a-year private members club in Washington, D.C., where business moguls can mingle with MAGA bigwigs and Cabinet members. Its opening event was attended by crypto investors, tech CEOs, and at least half a dozen senior members of the Trump administration. Eric oversees the Trump Organization, and weeks before his father’s spring tour of the Middle East, he raced across the region to secure property deals, including a $5.5 billion Trump resort in Qatar, funded by firms connected to the Qatari and Saudi royal families. Trump seemingly acknowledged the importance of Eric to the family firm last month when he was caught on a hot mic at the Gaza ceasefire summit in Egypt telling Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, “I’ll have Eric call you.”
What do investors get in return?
A direct return is not always obvious, but U.S. policy has bent in ways that benefit Trump business partners. Trump has ordered the Justice Department to pull back on investigations involving crypto, which is often used to hide criminal activity. Last week, Trump pardoned billionaire Chang- peng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering at his crypto exchange Binance. Zhao’s firm has close ties with World Liberty Financial. And in September, Trump signed an executive order promising to defend Qatar—which gifted him a $400 million Boeing 747-8 this spring—from any attack, despite the nation’s history of supporting Hamas and other extremist groups. The Trumps, though, are unfazed by corruption accusations. “They’re going to hit you no matter what,” said Don Jr., “so we’re just going to play the game.”
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