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Tag: trump family corruption
'Worst Presidential Relative Ever': The Sheer Moral Repugnance Of Don Jr's Endless Grift

'Worst Presidential Relative Ever': The Sheer Moral Repugnance Of Don Jr's Endless Grift

Calling him out for an unprecedented level of "shameless corruption and sheer moral repugnance" as he attempts to cash in on his father's office, a new breakdown from MS NOW argued that Donald Trump Jr. just might be the "worst presidential relative ever."

In a piece published Sunday morning, author and commentator Paul Waldman noted that "problematic presidential family members are an American tradition as old as the republic," noting examples like Theodore Roosevelt's hot-headed daughter, Alice, and Jimmy Carter's "colorful buffoon" brother, Billy. Under the second administration of President Donald Trump, however, he argued that his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has become the "new standard by which all future misbehavior among presidential offspring should be judged."

"When it comes to grasping for taxpayer money, shameless corruption and sheer moral repugnance, none who came before can hold a candle to Donald Trump Jr.," Waldman wrote. "He has cemented his position as perhaps the most distasteful and ethically compromised presidential relative in American history — and his father isn’t even halfway through his second term."

He continued later: "Don Jr. wasn’t just going to sit by and watch Dad have all the fun. So he has undertaken his own frenzy of dealmaking, all of it seemingly based on the fact that he’s the president’s son. Some of the enterprises are joint ventures with the whole family. There’s World Liberty Financial, a crypto company that has been the vehicle for some of the biggest players looking to give payoffs to the Trumps and get something in return.

As an investigative report revealed, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser secretly invested half a billion dollars in the company. Not long after, the Trump administration lifted export controls on computer chips the UAE desperately wants to create its own artificial intelligence infrastructure (Commerce Department staff objected to the change, but the White House cites the UAE’s position as a U.S. ally.)

"Donald Trump Jr., alongside his younger brother, Eric Trump, has also found ways to consistently cash in on the U.S. government's increased defense spending. As Waldman described the dynamic, the siblings have made investments in smaller defense companies, "then watch as huge government contracts magically materialize." Another company they are extensively invested in, Kaz Resources, received $1.6 billion in investments from the federal government, and saw the president himself intervene to make sure the company received special access to tungsten mines in Kazakhstan as part of a new deal with the country.

"Don Jr. has always had the air of a man desperate to please his indifferent father," Waldman concluded. "This spring, the president couldn’t even be bothered to attend his son’s wedding. But if he keeps this up, he’ll be able to say, 'See Dad, I’m just as greedy and corrupt as you!' It’s an achievement no presidential relative can match."

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Trump Overruled Wary Intel Officials Who Withheld Kushner's Top Secret Clearance

Trump Overruled Wary Intel Officials Who Withheld Kushner's Top Secret Clearance


Jared Kushner's investment fund, Affinity Partners, and its ties to Saudi Arabia not only drew scrutiny from Democrats; even conservative Rep. James Comer (R-KY) warned that it "crossed the line of ethics." According to Mother Jones' Casey Michel, Kushner was "denied top-secret clearance" — that is, until his father-in-law, President Donald Trump, stepped in and "overruled intelligence officials."

"Of course, it wasn't just Saudi Arabia that saw Kushner as a pliable source of influence," Michel explains in Mother Jones. "The United Arab Emirates, whose own despot had cultivated Kushner years before, began tossing money at Affinity Partners around the same time. So did the Qatari regime, which slipped back into America's good graces as it was helping bail out Kushner's family company. To date, firms linked to the UAE and Qatar have invested at least $1.5 billion in Kushner's fund. With more modest infusions from smaller investors, nearly all foreign, Affinity's asset pool grew and grew, topping $6 billion and generating more than $100 million in management fees for Kushner and his partners…. The investments themselves weren't enough of an ethical hornet's nest, the contracts Affinity signed give the regimes troubling leverage over Kushner."

Michel adds, "They allow investors to pull out after a five-year window, which means Saudi Arabia and Qatar have the power to implode Affinity in the middle of Trump's second term, decimating Kushner’s standing — a financial sword of Damocles that, by extension, dangles over the federal government."A former White House official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Mother Jones, "There was a risk the Saudis were playing him."

Michel notes that according to NBC News, Kushner's application for a top-secret security clearance was initially rejected because of fears "about potential foreign influence." But when Trump overruled intelligence officials, Kushner was, Michel reports, granted "access to America's most closely held secrets."

"As MBS [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] tucked Kushner further into his pocket," Michel reports, "other regimes tried to replicate the Saudi success. One year into Trump's first term, U.S. intelligence analysts reported that officials from a range of foreign countries had 'privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner,' the Washington Post noted, 'by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties, and lack of foreign policy experience.' They'd hit on the same conclusion as MBS: Kushner was tractable, and perhaps the best vector for influencing Trump."

Michel continues, "One of those countries was Israel…. Russia had a similar epiphany. Once Trump was sworn in, Kushner became a Kremlin target second only to Trump himself. President Vladimir Putin, federal documents show, tasked businessman Kirill Dmitriev with courting top White House officials, and Dmitriev took a particular interest in Kushner."

According to Michel, "Kushner's assertion" that he "would play no role in a second administration crumbled as soon as Trump returned to power" — and foreign powers have been "quick to recapitalize on his proximity to the throne.""[Kushner] and his partners are traveling the world, gleefully raking in cash as they cultivate relationships with sordid regimes and kleptocratic leaders in the interest of making a buck," Michel warns. "The world burns, and Jared Kushner gets richer."

Trump Family Wins Big Again In Crypto, While Their Investors Lose Even Bigger

Trump Family Wins Big Again In Crypto, While Their Investors Lose Even Bigger

The Trump family cashed in big on a $500 million crypto deal, but their investors didn’t get so lucky.

In August 2025, Donald Trump Jr. and younger brother Eric inked a deal with Alt5 Sigma and celebrated at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York City.

But less than 10 months later, the business that brought the first family a huge windfall is now facing closure.

With stock prices plummeting, Alt5 Sigma—now renamed AI Financial Corp.—is facing being delisted from the Nasdaq. But because of its prior purchase of $1.5 billion in crypto tokens from the Trump brothers’ trading platform World Liberty Financial, the family cashed in—despite the failure that quickly ensued for the financial technology company.

The suspicious nature of the deal prompted attorneys for Democracy Defenders Fund to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch an investigation.

Attorneys warn that Alt5 Sigma had participated in “steering investor funds to entities co-owned by President Trump and his associates.”

The SEC has not launched an investigation or acknowledged the letter from the nonpartisan organization.

The Trump brothers have been heavily involved in the crypto community, building out the family empire as their father President Donald Trump slashed regulations around the highly volatile market.

Through World Liberty Financial, the Trumps have a stake in former UFC champion Conor McGregor’s business, MMA Inc., and the two brothers have made splashy appearances at a number of international crypto events.

According to CNBC, Eric boasted at a Hong Kong-based crypto conference last August that 90 percent of his time is now spent with the crypto community.

But when you look at how much the Trump family has won while those playing the crypto game have lost, the difference is stark.

When the family launched its $TRUMP meme coins, fans and investors alike jumped on the opportunity. In turn, the Trumps sat on a meme-coded pile of money that amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Soon after, however, those who bought in on the investment began losing.

The Trumps have used crypto as a means to amass more wealth with little investment of their own, a Reuters investigation concluded.

According to the outlet, the president and his sons have added at least $2.3 billion to their family fortune, mainly through crypto. However, investors have taken a $2.3 billion hit.

“Under the Trump crypto playbook, the family always wins. Investors don’t,” the report concluded.

Two other ventures, like World Liberty Financial and an investment in American Bitcoin, have also resulted in pain for investors while the family raked in the profit.

Crypto platform WLF has even sparked a lawsuit for its alleged extortion of a billionaire backer.

Justin Sun, a crypto mogul who initially supported the Trump family’s efforts, sued World Family Financial after allegedly being pressured into buying more coins.

The crypto con adds to a growing list that includes Trump-branded cell phones, perfumes, sneakers, Bibles, social media apps, fin tech, and many other money grabs that have the president’s seal of approval.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Fox Anchor Said Network Must Report Trump Family Grift (And Did For Five Minutes)

Fox Anchor Said Network Must Report Trump Family Grift (And Did For Five Minutes)

Fox News’ Special Report has devoted only about five minutes of airtime to stories about alleged influence peddling by President Donald Trump’s family members in the 13 months since its anchor, Bret Baier, told an interviewer that the press “100%” had an obligation to report such stories with the same vigor with which they had pursued Republican allegations about the business interests of former President Joe Biden's son Hunter.

When Politico’s Dasha Burns asked Baier last year about reports on the international business dealings of Trump’s eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, the Fox chief political anchor laid down a marker that covering such stories was vital.

“If you're going to play it one way, you've got to play it another way, and you’ve got to cover all of those things,” he explained during the interview, which was published on May 9, 2025. Baier cited what he termed “real questions” about the “access” of the Trump sons and that of President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.

Such coverage is more than warranted — Trump and his family members oversee a sprawling business empire that has grown dramatically since he launched his reelection campaign. It includes immense holdings in cryptocurrency and international real estate deals through business entities now controlled by Eric and Don Jr. Kushner and the president’s sons also hold an array of consulting and venture capital positions that have the aroma of influence peddling. These businesses benefit from Trump’s presidency — some even receiving direct federal contracts — while posing conflicts with U.S. policy.

But Baier was not living up to the standard he set. While Special Report had routinely covered Hunter Biden stories, its handling of the Trump family’s myriad financial conflicts over the first 81 episodes of the second Trump term (the period prior to his May 2025 Politico interview) consisted of only a single underwhelming segment about its cryptocurrency holdings, as Media Matters noted at the time.

And now, after Baier’s program has spent another 13 months all but ignoring the damning reporting from other outlets about these shady business dealings, we can say conclusively that he has not followed through on his promise to “cover all of those things.”

Here’s what little Special Report has said about the many Trump family business dealings

  • The five-minute sum of Special Report’s coverage of the conflicts of interest created by the Trump family’s business dealings in the 13 months since Baier’s remarks came over just four editions of the program that aired in November and early December of last year.In late October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, expunging Zhao’s 2023 conviction on charges related to Binance’s facilitation of money laundering for criminals and terrorists. The pardon — which set the stage for Binance’s return to the U.S. — came after Binance took steps following the 2024 election to bolster World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s then-newly formed crypto company. On November 4, 2025, Fox White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich addressed the pardon and briefly referenced “scrutiny over Binance's role in the Trump sons’ crypto venture.”Three nights later, Baier aired an exclusive interview with Zhao, roughly 2 minutes of which revolved around the Trump family’s business interests. The anchor repeatedly asked Zhao whether he had any business ties to the president’s sons and if those connections led to his pardon, only for Zhao to flatly deny any such relationship.

Special Report also briefly mentioned Zhao receiving a Trump pardon after Binance boosted the Trump family’s investment earlier in the November 7, 2025, program, and again on its December 5, 2025, edition.

The only other reference to the Trump family’s business dealings that we found on Special Report since last May came on November 19, 2025. Discussing a bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress, correspondent Rich Edson reported: “Some members want to extend stock trade prohibitions to those in the judiciary and executive branches as Trump family business interests have drawn more attention. The president says he has nothing to do with his family business.”

And that’s it for Special Report’s treatment of alleged Trump family self-dealing, corruption, and conflicts of interest from May 9, 2025, through June 2, 2026. Special Report’s treatment of the World Liberty Financial story notably failed to address a key aspect uncovered by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in February: Emirati Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is literally known as the “spy sheikh,” secretly paid $500 million for a major stake in the Trump family company just four days before Trump’s inauguration, and subsequently received approval from the Trump administration for “access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips” that the previous administration had blocked due to “fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China.”

“You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE,” National Review writer and Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy noted in a column on that story. And then there are the myriad stories that Baier completely ignored during that period, a sampling of which are included below:

    • The Wall Street Journal reported in October that “BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company that this year installed Trump Jr. as a board member,” was set to host an event featuring the president’s son, “the country’s top drugmakers,” and “senior Trump administration officials that regulate the pharmaceutical industry” which would “ conclude with a dinner at the Executive Branch, the exclusive new club founded by Trump Jr. and his close friends.”
    • After drone company Unusual Machines put Trump Jr. on an advisory board and gave him “shares worth millions,” the firm announced “at least $15.2 million in military-linked orders, including a direct U.S. Army buy,” Forbes reported in October.
    • The Associated Press reported after President Trump launched the war with Iran that military drone company Powerus — which counts Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as investors — was seeking Pentagon contracts and pitching its interceptors to Gulf countries “while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.”
    • Kushner has been moonlighting as a top U.S. negotiator before and during the Iran war — but there are questions about whose interests he is serving since his day job is running the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which “took a $2 billion investment from a Saudi fund led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”
    • In April, the robotics company Foundation Future Industries won a $24 million Pentagon contract; Eric Trump is the firm’s “chief strategy adviser.”
    • The Trump Organization, which is led by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, has embarked on international real estate deals in the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman in partnership with a developer who has ties to the Saudi government.
    • A joint venture between the Trump Organization and a local consortium is building a Trump Tower in Tbilisi, Georgia, “on land currently part-owned by the son of the US-sanctioned leader of the country,” The Guardian reported in May.
    • ProPublica reported last week that North Carolina startup Vulcan Elements received a $620 million loan from the Pentagon — at the insistence of the White House — three months after the venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner took a stake in it.

The context of Baier ignoring the Trump family’s corruption


Special Report’s paltry coverage of the Trump family’s business dealings is infinitesimal when compared to the program’s handling of Hunter Biden’s business interests before and during the Biden administration.

When Baier laid down his marker last May, we noted that after the New York Post broke the story regarding former President Joe Biden's son's laptop in October 2020, Special Report covered Hunter Biden's alleged influence peddling in at least 32 segments over 19 days that combined for more than an hour and a half of airtime. Other Media Matters research revealed that Hunter Biden’s name was mentioned on Special Report at least 679 times from January 2023 through April 2024.

Baier’s work reflects the broader shift at his network, which furiously demagogued the right’s thin claims of Biden corruption but has ignored or excused the allegations surrounding Trump, even as the latter often feature orders of magnitude more money and much more direct nexuses to the White House.

Indeed, some Fox personalities are even cashing in with the Trumps — star host Laura Ingraham is on a corporate board alongside Trump Jr. for a company whose CEO co-founded the venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, while contributor Brett Velicovich co-founded a drone company that counts the Trump sons as investors.

Baier has reaped substantial benefits from his lackadaisical coverage of what we should probably term the Trump crime family. The president regularly harangues and threatens journalists from more credible news outlets — but the treatment he gives Baier is closer to that reserved for Baier’s propagandistic evening-show hosts.

The Fox anchor has been Trump’s guest on the golf course and received highly sought invitations to White House galas like November’s lavish banquet honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the April state dinner for King Charles III of Britain and his wife Camilla, the queen consort.

Baier has also received a steady stream of interviews with top Trump administration officials, and just last month, he sat down with Trump himself during the president’s state visit to China.

Accompanying the president on that trip was his son Eric Trump (who is married to Baier’s colleague, Fox host and walking media ethics disaster Lara Trump). The New York Times noted that Eric’s presence “could blur the lines between government business and private enterprise” and “evoked parallels to Hunter Biden’s decision to join his father, then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., on a trip to China in 2013.” But the president’s son tagging along on the China visit went unmentioned during Baier’s interview and ensuing Special Report coverage of the trip.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Nexis database for all original episodes of Special Report with Bret Baier for any of the terms “Don,” “Don Jr.,” “Don Junior,” “Donald Jr.,” “Donald Junior,” “Eric,” “Jared,” “Kushner,” “Ivanka,” “Melania,” “Lara,” “son,” “sons,” or “family” within five words of either of the terms “Trump” or “president” from May 9, 2025, when Special Report host Bret Baier told Politico that the media should “100%” go just as hard after President Donald Trump's sons' business dealings as it had Hunter Biden's, through June 2, 2026.We timed segments, which we defined as instances when any allegations of influence peddling or financial conflicts against any of Trump's family (excluding the president himself) were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of such allegations. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed such allegations with one another.We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned any such corruption allegations without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about such allegations scheduled to air later in the broadcast.We rounded all reported times to the nearest minute.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters



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