Donald Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr have embarked on a worldwide tour in recent weeks with stops across Europe and the Middle East promoting Trump-associated business ventures that could directly benefit the president.
The deals include a $1 billion luxury hotel in Dubai, a golf course and villa complex in Qatar, a hotel in Serbia, and a $2 billion investment from an Abu Dhabi-backed venture capital fund using a currency offered by the Trump family’s crypto firm World Liberty Financial.
On the home front last month, Donald Trump Jr announced the launch of a $500,000-per-membership exclusive club in Washington, D.C., called, cheekily, the Executive Branch, the name for the category of federal offices that include the presidency.
Taken together, the deals will generate millions for the Trump family and its companies, with some of those benefits flowing directly to the president, according to an analysis from The New York Times.
The White House insists that the president’s assets are held in a trust managed by his children, so the deals don’t prevent a conflict of interest.
“It’s laughable that the left-wing media thinks that I should lock myself in a padded room while my father is president and cease doing what I’ve been doing for over 25 years to earn a living and provide for my five children,” Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement to The Times.
Others have argued the Trump administration is conducting an unsavory mix of business and politics, a criticism that hit the family during the first Trump term, as lobbyists and foreign officials filled the halls of the now-sold Trump hotel in Washington.
Responding to reports that a trucking firm bought millions in Trump crypto coins to lobby on tariff policy, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, called the administration “the most corrupt White House in American history” in an X post on Monday.
“It’s called bribery,” he said. “And apparently it used to be illegal.”
This week, Trump is attending a $1.5-million-per-plate crypto dinner hosted by a pro-Trump super PAC, as well as a dinner later in the week for top investors in the Trump crypto meme coin.
Donald Trump and his supporters have repeatedly attacked Hunter Biden for his business dealings with Ukrainian company Burisma when his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.