Trump family secretly signed $500m crypto deal with 'spy sheikh' who has been pushing for access to US intelligence
The Trump family quietly signed a $500 million cryptocurrency deal with a powerful Abu Dhabi royal just days before Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
A previously undisclosed agreement that sent nearly $200 million to Trump-linked entities and was followed months later by the US granting the same foreign power sweeping access to sensitive artificial intelligence technology.
The deal, involving Trump-backed crypto firm World Liberty Financial, was signed on January 16, 2025, by Eric Trump and executives tied to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser and brother of the country's president.
The previously undisclosed deal was confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, company documents and others familiar with the matter.
The transaction made a foreign government official the largest shareholder in a company tied to the US president. The move is unprecedented in modern American politics, raising questions about conflicts of interest and the influence of foreign powers.
The buyer was Aryam Investment 1, a company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East.
The agreement granted Aryam a 49 percent ownership stake in World Liberty for $500 million - with $250 million paid immediately, and $187 million of that first installment directed to Trump family entities, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.
Tahnoon, who serves as the UAE's national security adviser and oversees a sprawling business empire worth more than $1.3 trillion, has long been viewed with suspicion inside Washington's intelligence and national security circles.
Donald Trump and UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan Tahnoon secretly backed a company that bought 49 percent of the Trump family’s crypto firm for $500 million. The pair are seen meeting at White House on March 18, 2025
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. both served as key public faces of World Liberty Financial when the $500 million Tahnoon-backed deal was signed
President Donald Trump is seen hosting Sheikh Tahnoon last March at The White House
He controls the powerful AI and surveillance firm G42, which had drawn scrutiny during the Biden administration over its past ties to China's Huawei and other Chinese tech companies.
US officials had repeatedly blocked or restricted UAE access to advanced American AI chips, fearing sensitive technology could be diverted to Beijing.
Under Trump, the door reopened. In March, Tahnoon met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office alongside senior administration officials, where he expressed eagerness to expand cooperation on AI and technology, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Just two months later, the Trump administration approved a framework that would allow the UAE to receive around 500,000 advanced AI chips annually, the Journal stated, a volume large enough to build one of the world's biggest data center clusters.
Publicly, the deal was hailed as a strategic win for US tech companies.
Privately, few knew that Tahnoon's envoys had already secured a massive financial stake in Trump's crypto venture.
Upon hearing news of the deal, Democrat Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy shared his contempt for the deal in a tweet on Sunday evening declaring it to be 'Mind blowing corruption.'
'Trump reversed decades of national security objections to selling advanced AI chips to UAE. National security experts were alarmed. But there was a secret. Before the deal, UAE had sent $187M to the Trumps and $31M to the Witkoffs in secret payments. Mind blowing corruption,' Murphy wrote.
At the time of the January agreement, World Liberty Financial had no operational products.
Sheikh Tahnoon met President Trump in the Oval Office in March to discuss artificial intelligence and technology cooperation
Tahnoon was seen at The White House with Trump and other US officials in March. Martin Edelman, a top Tahnoon adviser, is seated at the end of the table
Eric Trump and Zach Witkoff both sat on World Liberty Financial’s board at the time the $500 million deal was signed
The World Liberty Financial website is seen on a smartphone last February with the Trumps at the helm
After the January transaction, the Trump family’s stake was reduced - disclosures later showed their ownership dropping from 75 percent to roughly 38 percent, indicating that the foreign-backed entity became the largest shareholder
Trump has credited his entrepreneurial youngest child, Barron, 19, left, with educating him about crypto. Barron's half-brothers Donald Jr, center, and Eric, right, are heavily involved in his crypto business
Its only revenue came from selling a token called WLFI, which had raised about $82 million, but the Aryam investment changed everything.
According to company records, the deal triggered immediate multimillion-dollar payouts to Trump-linked entities, as well as to companies affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime friend and newly appointed Middle East envoy.
Two senior executives from G42, Martin Edelman and Peng Xiao, were also placed on World Liberty's five-person board the Journal reported, alongside Eric Trump and Zach Witkoff, Steve Witkoff's son and World Liberty's CEO.
World Liberty did not publicly disclose the new board members or the identity of its largest investor.
Disclosures on the company's website later showed the Trump family's ownership had dropped from 75 percent to 38 percent, signaling that a massive stake had been sold - but without naming who bought it.
Weeks before the US–UAE chip deal was announced, Zach Witkoff appeared on stage in Dubai to reveal that MGX, another Tahnoon-controlled fund, would use World Liberty's new stablecoin, USD1, to complete a $2 billion investment into Binance.
The move instantly catapulted USD1 into the top tier of global stablecoins and handed World Liberty a $2 billion cash reserve, which the company now invests in US Treasury bonds - generating tens of millions in interest.
Neither company disclosed that MGX and World Liberty shared leadership or that both were controlled by executives tied to Tahnoon.
Donald Trump Jr., executive vice president of development and acquisitions for Trump Organization Inc., from center left, Zach Witkoff, co-founder and chief executive officer of World Liberty Financial and chairman of ALT5 Sigma Corp
2024 was a busy year for Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan as he met with Bill Gates, left and Tim Cook, right
Earlier in 2024, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan was seen schmoozing with Mark Zuckerberg
By March, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan was walking the corridors of power alongside Trump in the White House, pictured in March 2025
Marco Rubio is seen greeting UAE Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan at The White House last March
Legal experts and former government ethics officials described the sequence of events as explosive.
'This sure looks like a violation of the foreign emoluments clause, and more to the point, it looks like a bribe,' said Kathleen Clark to WSJ.com, a former ethics lawyer for Washington, D.C.
Ty Cobb, who served as a top White House lawyer in Trump's first term, was blunt.
'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.'
The White House has denied any conflict.
'President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,' said spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. 'There are no conflicts of interest.'
White House counsel David Warrington added, 'The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities.'
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan is seen here with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
The Sheikh is seen greeting Commerce Secretary, businessman and philanthropist Howard Lutnick
President Donald Trump accepted this $400 million plane from the Qataris last May noting how it would later be donated to his presidential library
A spokesperson for World Liberty said the deal did not grant any government access or influence.
'We made the deal in question because we strongly believe that it was what was best for our company,' said spokesman David Wachsman to The Journal. 'We operate by the same rules and regulations as any other company in our space.'
A person familiar with Tahnoon's investment said the sheikh reviewed World Liberty's plans for months and that 'at no time during that due diligence or thereafter was the investment discussed with President Trump.
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.'
Tahnoon was already doing business with Trump’s inner circle.
His companies previously invested $1.5 billion into a firm run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sheikh Tahnoon on a return visit to the UAE in May
Trump took part in a tour at Qasr Al Watan in Abu Dhabi in the UAE last May to look at a model of an AI data center project
The Sheikh is seen here with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner
Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao,a move that drew fierce criticism from Democrats, who accused the president of selling access to wealthy foreign interests
And soon after Trump’s inauguration, Tahnoon’s MGX was announced as an investor in a $500 billion AI data center project involving OpenAI and SoftBank - a venture Trump personally promoted from the White House.
By September, MGX was selected as one of the firms authorized to operate TikTok in the US.
A month later, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a move that drew fierce criticism from Democrats, who accused the president of selling access to wealthy foreign interests.
