WSJ reports secret deal Trump family signed

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Full Article From the Wall Street Journal

"Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities.

The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said.

The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh”—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president, the government’s national security adviser, as well as the leader of the oil-rich country’s largest wealth fund. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money that spans from fish farms to AI to surveillance, making him one of the most powerful single investors in the world.

The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.

Under the Biden administration, Tahnoon’s efforts to get AI hardware had been largely stymied over fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China. Of particular concern was one of Tahnoon’s own companies, the AI firm G42, which had stoked alarm among intelligence officials and lawmakers over its close ties to the sanctioned tech giant Huawei and other Chinese firms. The company said it severed ties with China in late 2023, but concerns persisted.

Trump’s election reopened the door for him. In the months that followed, Tahnoon met multiple times with Trump, Witkoff and other U.S. officials, including in a March visit to the White House where the sheikh told officials he was eager to work with the U.S. on AI and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter.

Two months after the March meeting, the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters. The framework agreement called for roughly one-fifth of the chips to go to G42, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

The agreement was widely viewed as a coup for the emirate’s ruling family, overcoming longstanding U.S. national security concerns and allowing the country to compete with the most powerful economies in the world at the cutting edge of AI advances. Proponents hailed the deal for unlocking a flood of investment into the U.S. and for helping entrench American technology as the global standard.

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What wasn’t publicly known: Tahnoon’s emissaries had signed the deal to purchase 49% of World Liberty that January.


Trump in Abu Dhabi in May. Win McNamee/Getty Images


Tahnoon at the White House with Trump and other U.S. officials in March. Martin Edelman, a top Tahnoon adviser, is seated at the end of the table. White House

Of the first $250 million installment from the Tahnoon-backed company, called Aryam Investment 1, $187 million was directed to Trump family entities DT Marks DEFI LLC and DT Marks SC LLC, the documents said. In addition to the payout to Witkoff family entities, another $31 million was directed to an entity tied to co-founders Zak Folkman and Chase Herro. The Journal couldn’t determine how the second half of Aryam’s investment, which was due by July 15, 2025, may have been distributed.

The agreement would make Aryam World Liberty’s largest shareholder, and the firm’s only known investor outside of its founders. The deal placed two Aryam executives, who also held top positions at Tahnoon’s G42, on World Liberty’s five-person board, which at the time included Eric Trump and Zach Witkoff—Steve Witkoff’s son, the documents said.

Trump’s real-estate company has courted deals with foreign companies since his election, and the president has accepted gifts from foreign governments, including a $400 million luxury airliner from Qatar. But the World Liberty deal is the only known case of a foreign government official purchasing a major stake in a Trump company after his election.

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Disclosures on World Liberty’s website showed the Trump family’s equity interest fell to 38% from 75% last year, indicating someone had likely purchased a stake, but the company has never disclosed a buyer.

Weeks before the U.S.-U.A.E. chip deal was announced in May, World Liberty CEO Zach Witkoff announced that MGX, a Tahnoon-led investment firm, would use World Liberty’s stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment into the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The G42 executives added to World Liberty’s board were also on the board of MGX, which is co-owned by G42.

Zach Witkoff touted the MGX stablecoin deal as an endorsement of World Liberty’s technology. He didn’t disclose that MGX and World Liberty were being led by some of the same people.

“We made the deal in question because we strongly believe that it was what was best for our company as we continue to grow,” said David Wachsman, a spokesman for World Liberty, of the Aryam investment. “The idea that, when raising capital, a privately held American company should be held to some unique standard that no other similar company would be held is both ridiculous and un-American.”

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He said President Trump and Steve Witkoff had no involvement in the deal and haven’t been involved in World Liberty since taking office, and that Witkoff had never played an operational role in the company. He added the deal didn’t grant either party involved any sort of access to government decision-making or influence over policy. “We operate by the same rules and regulations as any other company in our space,” he said.

A person familiar with Tahnoon’s investment said the sheikh and his team reviewed World Liberty’s plans for “a number of months” before he and “a few co-investors” completed an investment in the company, which the person said didn’t involve G42 money. “At no time during that due diligence or thereafter was the investment discussed with President Trump,” the person said. Tahnoon is a “significant investor” in crypto businesses, the person said.

“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, who said his assets are in a trust managed by his children. “There are no conflicts of interest.” She said Witkoff is working to “advance President Trump’s goals of peace around the world.”

White House counsel David Warrington said, “The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities.”

He said Witkoff takes seriously his compliance with government ethics rules. “He has not and does not participate in any official matters that could impact his financial interests,” he said, adding that Witkoff has “divested from World Liberty Financial.”

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A person close to Witkoff said the envoy wasn’t involved in the country’s AI chip negotiations related to G42 but was briefed on the discussions.

A Trump Organization spokesperson said the company “takes its ethical obligations extremely seriously and is deeply committed to preventing conflicts of interest,” and abides by all applicable laws.

‘Our family loves you’
Donald Trump speaking with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Abu Dhabi International Airport.
Trump with Mohamed, the U.A.E. president, during the May visit. Altaf Qadri/Associated Press
When Trump won re-election, the Emiratis were hopeful for a more agreeable partner in the U.S.

For Tahnoon, tapped by his brother to lead the country’s push to become a world leader in AI, securing access to U.S. chips was a top priority. During the Biden administration, U.S. officials allowed the country only a limited number over concerns the chips could make their way to China. While G42 said it had cut ties to China in late 2023, the U.A.E.—including other companies in Tahnoon’s empire—continued to have strong ties to the country.

Tahnoon wanted approval for a mountain of additional chips to build one of the world’s largest AI data center clusters, requiring the equivalent of more than two Hoover Dams of power. Tahnoon and his deputies planned to launch a full-court press to win over the incoming Trump administration.

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Tahnoon was already in business with the Trump family through Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose investment firm had raised $1.5 billion in 2024 from a Tahnoon-backed company and Qatar.

Soon after his election, Trump tapped Steve Witkoff, his longtime friend and golfing partner, to be Middle East envoy. Witkoff moved quickly, telling Biden administration officials that he planned to reach out to his connections in the region. He would travel to the U.A.E., Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel before the inauguration.

An early December visit to the U.A.E. combined both diplomacy and crypto. Witkoff, who had helped launch World Liberty in September, attended a crypto conference in Abu Dhabi, mingling in a VIP room with crypto titans and Eric Trump. In a keynote speech, Eric Trump declared to the people of the U.A.E.: “Our family loves you.”

Eric Trump at an Abu Dhabi crypto conference in December 2024. Video: Reuters
Witkoff also met Tahnoon, the Journal previously reported, part of a series of meetings in the region to discuss a cease-fire in Gaza and other issues.

About a week after Witkoff’s trip, two entities were registered, two days apart, in Delaware and Abu Dhabi, offering no public record of their ownership. They shared the same name: Aryam Investment 1.

The Delaware Aryam is managed by executives at Tahnoon’s G42, according to company records reviewed by the Journal. The Abu Dhabi entity shares a U.A.E. office address with several other companies in the sheikh’s broader business empire.

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A few weeks later, on Jan. 16, 2025, Aryam representatives signed the $500 million deal with Trump and Witkoff’s World Liberty.

The Aryam purchase
Eric Trump speaking at the Token2049 conference in Dubai.
Eric Trump at a Dubai crypto conference in May. Anna Nielsen for WSJ
At the time of the investment, World Liberty had no products. It had raised $82 million by selling a token called WLFI. Aryam’s investment, though, didn’t give it the rights to future WLFI token sales, leaving the Tahnoon-backed entity out of what was then the company’s only source of revenue, the documents said.

Aryam’s deal to purchase the World Liberty stake was signed by Martin Edelman, G42’s general counsel and a top Tahnoon adviser, and Peng Xiao, G42’s CEO. The deal also involved Royal Group, Tahnoon’s personal investment company, where Edelman is an adviser.

Edelman and Xiao joined World Liberty’s board, though World Liberty didn’t include them as part of its team on its website.

The pair would play key roles in the U.A.E.’s chip lobbying efforts with the Trump administration.

Fiacc Larkin, G42’s head of crypto and blockchain, joined World Liberty in January 2025 as its chief strategic adviser. Larkin advises the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, a government agency, according to his LinkedIn.

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G42 had for years drawn scrutiny from Biden officials and also Republican lawmakers, who in 2024 had sought investigations into the risk that China could access sensitive U.S. technology through the company.

The Chinese-born Xiao, who went to college in Washington, obtained U.S. citizenship but later renounced it in favor of a U.A.E. one. Xiao personally came under scrutiny during the Biden administration. In a 2024 letter asking the Commerce Department to investigate him, a Republican committee chairman said documents showed Xiao was behind an “expansive network” of U.A.E. and China-based companies supporting Chinese “military-civil fusion and human rights abuses.”

U.S. President Donald Trump and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan stand together at a business forum.
Trump with Mohamed during the May visit. Peng Xiao, the CEO of Tahnoon’s AI firm G42, is second from left. brian snyder/Reuters
G42 in a statement that year said it denied the allegations in the letter and said the company had stopped engaging with Chinese companies.

Edelman is a high-profile New York real-estate lawyer who has spent decades cultivating relationships in the U.A.E. He advises the royal family and sits on the board of multiple Tahnoon companies, including G42 and MGX. He also has a longtime friendship with Witkoff, whom he publicly praised after the election.

The deal to purchase the stake was hugely profitable to World Liberty’s founders. It granted swift paydays to entities affiliated with the Trumps, Witkoffs, Folkman and Herro, according to the company documents reviewed by the Journal. Trump personally owned 70% of DT Marks DEFI while other family members owned 30% as of the end of 2024, according to his disclosures; he hasn’t disclosed the ownership breakdown of DT Marks SC.

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Anatomy of a Deal

Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan

U.A.E. royal tasked with securing AI chips

Chairman

MGX used World

Liberty’s stablecoin

to invest $2 billion

in Binance


G42 + MGX

Executives/board members

Peng Xiao and Martin Edelman

Manage

Aryam Investment 1

World Liberty

Financial

Aryam agreed to invest

$500 million for a 49%

stake, taking two World

Liberty board seats

First payment

$250 million

$187M

$31M

$31M

Trump

family

entities

Witkoff

family

entities

Zak Folkman/

Chase Herro

entity

Trump has long faced criticism for retaining control of his private business empire while in office and for the foreign profits that come with it. In his first term, Democratic lawmakers sued Trump, alleging he violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by receiving profits from foreign governments patronizing his businesses. Trump called it a witch hunt, and the Justice Department said Trump’s share of the profits didn’t count as an emolument. The Supreme Court declined to review the matter.

In his second term, Trump’s real-estate holding company, the Trump Organization, said it wouldn’t enter into new contracts with foreign governments during his presidency but didn’t restrict itself from pursuing new foreign deals with private companies—a change from the first term. The company has said it would donate to the U.S. Treasury profits it receives from foreign government officials the company can identify at its hotels and other businesses. World Liberty didn’t make such pledges.

Legal experts said the deal with Aryam could violate the emoluments clause and said the proximity of the country’s chip agreement to the World Liberty deal posed a significant conflict of interest.

The provision is intended to prevent any government official from being “in the pocket of a foreign government,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor and former ethics lawyer for the city of Washington, D.C. “This sure looks like a violation of the foreign emoluments clause, and more to the point, it looks like a bribe.”

The transaction, she said, “should be a five-alarm fire about the federal government being for sale.”

Trump’s conflicts of interest have so dwarfed those of his predecessors that “it’s like complaining about kayaks when B52s are flying overhead,” said Ty Cobb, who served as a top White House lawyer in Trump’s first administration. “My advice as an ethics lawyer would have been clear: You don’t do business deals with the families of the leaders of foreign countries. It taints American foreign policy.”

A White House official said World Liberty’s business endeavors don’t involve Trump, and as a result any emoluments claims are “bogus and irrelevant.” Warrington, the White House counsel, said Trump “performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner.”

Lobbying for chips
President Trump and two men in traditional Arab dress look at a miniature city model, flanked by the US and UAE flags.
Trump and Mohamed looked at a model of an AI data center project during the May visit. Daniel Torok/White House
After investing in World Liberty, Tahnoon’s push for AI chips accelerated.

The sheikh hosted top tech and finance CEOs at his royal Abu Dhabi compound, posting about the meetings—often held on a set of white couches—on Instagram. He readied a pledge to invest vast amounts in the U.S. and emphasized the U.A.E. had tethered itself to the U.S. on AI.

On Trump’s first full day in office—five days after Aryam signed its deal with World Liberty—the president announced plans for a $500 billion, AI-focused data-center venture by OpenAI and SoftBank at the White House. Tahnoon’s MGX was one of two additional investors named. The project has yet to move forward.

In the spring, Trump administration officials began discussing the contours of a chip deal with the U.A.E. While some officials were unconcerned about a national security risk, others shared the previous administration’s worry that the tech could end up in China. They discussed placing limits on who could control the chips under such a deal, according to people familiar with the talks. One solution officials debated was cutting Emirati firms such as G42 out of any direct access and requiring the tech to be held by their U.S. partners, such as Microsoft or OpenAI.

In March, Tahnoon led a delegation to Washington, where in addition to a chip deal he planned to push for speedier government reviews of U.A.E. investments in U.S. companies, among other matters. He met with Trump in the Oval Office and pledged the U.A.E. would invest $1.4 trillion into the U.S. over a decade—a pledge that excited the president, according to one of the people familiar with the talks, though administration officials struggled to learn details of what the pledge would entail.

On March 18, Trump hosted a White House dinner for Tahnoon and his delegation, inviting the vice president and cabinet members including the State, Commerce and Treasury secretaries. Tahnoon sat beside Witkoff, with Edelman at the end of the table. Trump later posted pictures on Truth Social, where he touted the “bonds of friendship” between the two countries and said they had discussed bolstering their partnership on economic and technological issues.

Former national-security officials said they were stunned by the level of access Tahnoon had received. Under the Biden administration, visiting foreign officials typically met with their U.S. counterparts, not with the president and half a dozen cabinet members.

Meanwhile, Tahnoon and World Liberty were growing closer. In May, Zach Witkoff took the stage at a crypto conference in Dubai and announced that the sheikh’s investment firm, MGX, would use World Liberty’s stablecoin, USD1, to complete its $2 billion investment in Binance—the largest-ever investment into a cryptocurrency company. Zach Witkoff smiled as he thanked MGX “for their trust in us.”


World Liberty co-founders and executives in New York after ringing the Nasdaq opening bell on Aug. 13. Paola Chapdelaine for WSJ


Zach Witkoff and Eric Trump at the crypto conference in Dubai in May. Altaf Qadri/Associated Press

The move rocketed USD1 up the rankings of largest stablecoins, enhancing its financial credibility. It gave World Liberty a $2 billion cash pile, which the company holds in reserve to maintain the coins’ 1-to-1 tie to the dollar. The company invests the money in Treasurys and pockets the interest, generating about $80 million if held for a year.

MGX told the Journal last year it evaluated stablecoins on several platforms and examined factors including “business suitability” before selecting USD1. A World Liberty spokeswoman said USD1 was a “superior product.”

Neither company has ever disclosed that MGX and World Liberty shared leadership.

The Aryam deal had in fact laid the groundwork for the creation of USD1. The company’s investment had been split between two newly established World Liberty entities, one of which would operate the new stablecoin product, while the other managed the rest of the company.

G42’s Larkin oversaw the USD1 project at World Liberty, according to people close to the company.

Tahnoon’s $2 billion investment in Binance through MGX meant that he had a financial stake in helping its founder Changpeng Zhao obtain a pardon from Trump. The move could pave the way for Binance to return to the U.S. market, where it had been banned in 2023 after the company and Zhao pleaded guilty to violating anti-money-laundering rules.

Zhao, who lives in Abu Dhabi and obtained Emirati citizenship several years ago, is close to Tahnoon and has forged close ties with the U.A.E. royal family.

People close to the royal family urged the Trump administration to pardon Zhao, saying it would help bring the world’s largest crypto exchange back to the U.S., people familiar with the matter said. A pardon for Zhao would also open the door for U.A.E. authorities to grant Binance a full regulatory license, capping the exchange’s plans to make Abu Dhabi its new global base in a boost to the capital’s global finance ambitions.

Binance had been making its own push to return to the U.S. via a pardon. It took steps that boosted World Liberty’s business, the Journal previously reported. Zhao has denied any business relationship with the Trump crypto company, and Binance said it didn’t control the stablecoin chosen by MGX and had “limited involvement” with World Liberty-related products. World Liberty has denied playing any role in a pardon, and its lawyer has said its business interactions with Binance have been routine. A person close to Steve Witkoff said he wasn’t involved with the Zhao pardon.

A lawyer for Zhao, Teresa Goody Guillén, said his pardon hadn’t enabled Binance to enter the U.S. market and that the U.A.E. has been making a broad push to draw crypto companies. She said negatively framing Zhao’s pardon was “an unlawful attempt to usurp the pardon power” of the president.

On May 8, the Treasury Department announced it was launching a fast-track pilot program for foreign investors—the speedier review process the U.A.E. had lobbied for.

During the president’s visit to Abu Dhabi that month, Trump announced the two countries had agreed to a “very big contract” for the U.A.E. to buy U.S. AI chips. (Months later, after additional negotiations, the Trump administration approved the sale of 35,000 chips to G42, fewer than the U.A.E. had hoped.)

In the May presentation at the royal palace, Trump pored over a brightly lit 3-D model of a massive AI data center project G42 plans to develop, as Steve Witkoff and Tahnoon looked on nearby. Trump invoked Tahnoon repeatedly in meetings there, telling U.A.E. President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan that his “wonderful brother” had recently been to Washington, while Tahnoon posted pictures with Trump and Witkoff on his Instagram.

The relationship between the two countries, Trump predicted, would “only get bigger and better.” Trump told Mohamed: “Your relationship and mine can’t get better, so I can’t say it’s going to get better because it’s at the highest level it can be.”

In September, under a deal negotiated by the Trump administration, MGX became one of a handful of investors selected to operate TikTok in the U.S.

The next month, Trump pardoned Zhao, sparking outrage from Democratic lawmakers, who accused him of selling pardons to the highest bidder.

On Oct. 22, the day before the White House confirmed Trump had signed the pardon, Witkoff and Kushner were back in Abu Dhabi to discuss Gaza, Israel and Trump’s plan for a Board of Peace, a White House official said.

They were meeting with Tahnoon.

[Rideback]

Moments ago from the Wall Street Journal….New and unprecedented corruption concerns highlighted as to Trump and Witkoff, denials and spin as to this previously undisclosed financial shocker. Anyone surprised???
“By Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhaus, Eliot Brown and Angus Berwick | Design by Annie Ng
Jan. 31, 2026 9:00 pm ET
Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities.
The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said.
The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh”—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president, the government’s national security adviser, as well as the leader of the oil-rich country’s largest wealth fund. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money that spans from fish farms to AI to surveillance, making him one of the most powerful single investors in the world.
The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company…."