Trump Is Getting Even Richer. Is That a Crime?

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That's a mouthful.

Christopher Caldwell (0:31)

From New York Times Opinion, I'm Christopher Caldwell, the first in a series of people who will be guest hosting Interesting Times. The presidency has always been America's most powerful office. It didn't used to be the most lucrative, but maybe that's changing.

Since he came back to office, Donald Trump has made more than $2 billion, some of it coming from foreign potentates, some of it coming from American businessmen. Wherever it comes from, it's left a lot of people worried.

SPEAKER_4 (1:06)

Nearly 90% of Americans say that there's widespread corruption in government. That's the highest level in 20 years, and it's up 10% from just last year.

Christopher Caldwell (1:16)

It's left me worried. But is it unconstitutional? Is it even a crime? With me today is Professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School. He led the White House Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush. He's also written a number of books about how presidents fight for power with Congress and the courts.

Jack Goldsmith, welcome to Interesting Times.

Jack Goldsmith (1:47)

Thank you for having me.

Christopher Caldwell (1:50)

Why is it so unusual for a president to be getting rich the way Donald Trump is? Tell us, maybe you can tell us what's normal for a president.

Jack Goldsmith (2:01)

What's normal for a president is to strictly separate himself off from his personal finances, usually through a blind trust, a well-run strict blind trust, to ensure that the president's public policies are not influenced by his private business dealings, such as they are. Now, we've never had a president. George Washington was very wealthy. Other presidents have been wealthy. We've never had a president with the business dealings and business organization that Donald Trump has.

They are sprawling, interconnected, hard to follow organizations, which do a lot of business outside the United States, which makes it especially dangerous because they are sources for foreign monies to be given to the president through these various entities.

Christopher Caldwell (2:54)

Can you lay some of these out? What's he doing to make all this money?

Jack Goldsmith (2:58)

Sure. I mean, the most prominent ones have involved crypto, which provides channels that are anonymous and at scale for foreign entities to invest in Trump entities to give them money.

And there's been a lot of that, 1.4 billion reported in Trump's disclosures from 2025 That's been the main innovation of the second term. There have been others, the selling of access to truth social for $100,000 for a faster peak at what the president is going to say, and a whole bunch of other measures. The crypto stuff is where he's made the new chunk of money. And just to give a couple of examples, entities in the UAE invested, I believe, it was almost half a billion dollars, four or $500 million in World Liberty Financial for a 49 percent stake.

Christopher Caldwell (3:58)

World Liberty Financial is the crypto firm founded by the sons of Donald Trump and the sons of Steve Witkoff.

Jack Goldsmith (4:07)

I believe primarily. And there may be other people involved, but yes, it's a Trump-related entity for sure, and definitely Trump sons are involved.

The UAE National Security Advisor is involved investing in buying a 49 percent share of this money-making machine. So there's a lot of money coming to Trump families from entities outside the United States, which is unprecedented, complete, and especially at this scale, it's just been nothing like this in American history.

Christopher Caldwell (4:37)

And how does it align with other things that we might consider abuses of power in the White House, even if they don't involve putting money in the presidential pocket? Things like dynamiting the East Wing of the White House to rebuild a ballroom structure with donor contributions rather than congressionally appropriated money. Is that the same sort of thing, or is that a different family of...

Jack Goldsmith (5:07)

I would say it's on a continuum. So you might think that campaign finance contributions and or even contributions to the building of the White House, depending on how you look at what he's doing with the White House, you might think those all come within the American political democratic system.