Trump’s family is embroiled in a $500m UAE scandal. We’ve hardly noticed; The Guardian, February 6, 2026

Mohamad Bazzi, The Guardian ; Trump’s family is embroiled in a $500m UAE scandal. We’ve hardly noticed

"Days before Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, an investment firm controlled by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal family secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to buy almost half of a cryptocurrency startup founded by the Trump family. Under any other president, such an arrangement, which was revealedthis past weekend by the Wall Street Journal, would cause a political earthquake in Washington. There would be demands for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of damage control.

But this latest example of corruption involving Trump and his family business hardly made a blip over the past few days, relegated to a passing headline in a relentless news cycle often dominated by Trump’s actions and statements.

This scandal deserves our attention: a half-billion-dollar transaction with a foreign government official, executed in the shadow of Trump’s inauguration, which directly enriched the president and his family. The deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto companyfounded by the Trump family and several allies in the fall of 2024 during Trump’s presidential campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful officials in the UAE. Known as the “spy sheikh”, Tahnoon is the brother of the UAE’s president and serves as national security adviser. He also oversees one of the largest investment empires in the world, serving as chair of two Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, which have $1.5tn in assets, and G42, a firm focused on artificial intelligence.

It’s dizzying to keep up with the ways that Trump has monetized the presidency and used it for personal profit in his second term. The Trump Organization, run by the president’s sons, has negotiated foreign real estate deals worth billions of dollars, some of which involve private companies backed by governments of the three wealthiest Arab petrostates: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. In May, as Trump prepared to visit the Middle East, Qatar’s government donated a $400m luxury Boeing jet, which is being refitted by the US military so Trump can use it as Air Force One. It was probably the most expensive gift from a foreign government in US history – and Trump has said the plane will be transferred to his presidential library when his term ends in 2029, meaning he could still use it after he leaves the White House."

'Spy Sheikh’ Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company; Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2026

Sam Kessler,  Rebecca Ballhaus, Eliot Brown, and Angus Berwick, Wall Street Journal; 'Spy Sheikh’ Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company

"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."

Trump’s Pardon for Cocaine Juan: A jury found Honduras’s former President guilty. Why set him free?; The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2025

The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal; Trump’s Pardon for Cocaine Juan: A jury found Honduras’s former President guilty. Why set him free?

"President Trump, like other politicians, sometimes does something unpopular to please his base. But what is the audience for Mr. Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández?"

Former President of Honduras Is Freed From Prison After Trump Pardon; The New York Times, December 2, 2025

William K. Rashbaum, Maggie Haberman, Kenneth P. Vogel and Jonah E. Bromwich, The New York Times; Former President of Honduras Is Freed From Prison After Trump Pardon

"President Trump formally pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras on Monday evening, fulfilling a vow he had made days before to free an ex-president who was at the center of what the authorities had characterized as “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”"

Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex-president shows counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’; The Guardian, December 1, 2025

Tom Phillips, The Guardian ; Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex-president shows counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’

"He was a Latin American president accused of colluding with some of the region’s most ruthless narco bosses to flood the United States with cocaine.

“[Let’s] stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” the double-dealing politician once allegedly bragged as he lined his pockets with millions of dollars in bribes and turned his country into what many called a narco-state.

The description might sound like a sketch of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, who Donald Trump’s administration has accused of being a “narco-terrorist” kingpin and is trying to topple with a $50m bounty and a huge display of military might off the South American country’s Caribbean coast.

But it is actually a portrait – painted by US prosecutors, no less – of the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who Trump last week pledged to pardon, despite the fact that Hernández was sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”."

CREW/Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, January 29, 2025

 CREW/Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; CREW statement on Menendez sentencing

"Following the sentencing of former Senator Bob Menendez, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington President Noah Bookbinder, a former federal corruption prosecutor, released the following statement:

“Bob Menendez’s blatant corruption made a mockery of the Senate and was one more piece of the shattering of Americans’ trust in our government in recent years. We applaud Judge Stein for handing down a serious sentence in line with these very serious offenses. By sending Menendez to prison, the judge has shown that the system can work. And Americans can feel secure in the knowledge that, in at least some cases, corruption does not go unpunished.”"

Why haven’t Ohio lawmakers passed any ethics reforms since Larry Householder’s arrest?; Cleveland.com, July 1, 2023

Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com; Why haven’t Ohio lawmakers passed any ethics reforms since Larry Householder’s arrest?

"Nearly three years after ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested for overseeing the largest bribery scheme in state history, Ohio lawmakers haven’t passed a single piece of legislation to change state ethics or campaign-finance law."

Want to revive the political center? Fight corruption.; The Washington Post, August 31, 2018

Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post;

Want to revive the political center? Fight corruption.

"Any serious anti-corruption, anti-fraud platform should also have an international angle, because the spread of corruption in the United States is part of a larger sickness that now afflicts the entire Western alliance. Jointly, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, the rest of Europe — as well as Japan and Australia — are now locked in a real, life-and-death struggle against international kleptocracy. All of our political systems are now vulnerable to Russian and Chinese bribery and influence-buying. All of our online media is now the target of full-time political manipulation.

To preserve our democracies and maintain rule of law, we need to push back, as allies, using not just sanctions but also new laws limiting — or eliminating — the use of tax havens and the broader money-laundering toolkit."

"The Rules Are Different Here"; Bizarro, May 2, 2017

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "The Rules Are Different Here"