Has the President Profited From Being President? What the Records Show

The One-Sentence Version

This article asks a single factual question: has the president used the office to make money for himself, his family, and his businesses? It works from federal disclosure forms, court orders, and government records — not from accusations.

What You Need to Know First

Two clauses you probably haven’t read

The Constitution contains two specific provisions about the president and money.

The Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8) says no person holding any office of trust under the United States shall, without congressional consent, “accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”^[1]

The Domestic Emoluments Clause (Article II, Section 1, Clause 7) says the president shall receive a fixed salary that cannot be increased or decreased during his term, and “shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”^[1]

The Founders wrote both clauses on purpose. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 22, warned that republics are vulnerable because they “afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.” In Federalist No. 73, defending the Domestic Emoluments Clause, Hamilton wrote that “a power over a man’s support is a power over his will,” and that if Congress could alter a president’s pay during his term, it could “tempt him by largesses” to “surrender at discretion his judgment to their inclinations.”^[2]

The clauses are the Founders’ answer to that risk. They have rarely been litigated. For most of American history, presidents simply did not test them.

A real blind trust is not a legal label. It is a specific arrangement, defined by the Office of Government Ethics under 5 U.S.C. § 13104(f), with three requirements: the assets are managed by an independent trustee the official does not control, the official has no knowledge of what’s in the trust, and the official cannot communicate with the trustee about the holdings.^[3]

Modern presidents have used it.

Jimmy Carter placed his Georgia peanut warehouse business in a trust before taking office in 1977. The arrangement was later criticized because his trustee was a personal friend, but the assets were separated from his direct control.^[4]
Ronald Reagan placed his assets in a blind trust during his presidency.^[4]
George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush both used blind trusts.^[4]
Barack Obama chose a different path: he held only U.S. Treasury bonds and broad-based index funds, which the Office of Government Ethics considers acceptable because no single company’s fortunes can be influenced by the office.^[4]

That is the bar against which the current arrangement is measured.

What the Office of Government Ethics does

The Office of Government Ethics, or OGE, is a small independent agency created after Watergate. Its job is to administer financial-disclosure rules across the federal executive branch, including the presidency. Senior officials, including the president, must file an annual public disclosure on Form 278e listing assets, income sources, liabilities, and transactions.^[5]

The forms are published. Anyone can read them. Officials also file periodic transaction reports, on Form 278-T, listing individual purchases and sales. The one President Trump signed on May 8, 2026, covering the first three months of the year, is on OGE’s website.^[6]

That filing lists individual companies by name. It does not show who directed the trades.^[111]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version called the May 8 filing a Form 278e and said a signed disclosure listing individual stock purchases is, by definition, the opposite of a blind trust. The May 8 filing is a periodic transaction report (Form 278-T), and no source we rely on makes the “by definition” claim, so it has been removed.

A word about this article

Some readers will be skeptical of any piece framed around presidential corruption. That skepticism is reasonable; the word “corrupt” gets applied loosely in American politics. This article does not call anyone corrupt. It lays out what the financial records show, what the Constitution says, and what previous presidents did, and lets the reader weigh the comparison.

What Actually Happened: The First Term (2017-2021)

The “trust” that wasn’t

On January 11, 2017, nine days before his first inauguration, Donald Trump and his lawyer Sheri Dillon held a press conference to announce his ethics arrangement. Trump would step back from day-to-day management of the Trump Organization, leaving his adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric in charge. There would be no foreign deals. Profits from foreign-government bookings at Trump properties would be donated to the U.S. Treasury. The arrangement was described as a “trust.”^[7]

The director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, responded the same week in a speech at the Brookings Institution. Shaub said the arrangement “doesn’t meet the standards” of a blind trust because the assets remained the same, the trustees were Trump’s own sons, and Trump retained the ability to know what was held.^[8] Six months later, Shaub resigned, citing a “lack of independent oversight.”^[9]

The donation-to-Treasury arrangement also produced unusual results. In 2018, the Trump Organization sent the Treasury Department a check for $151,470 as its accounting of foreign-government profits for fiscal year 2017.^[10] House Oversight Democrats later released documents showing the company arrived at that figure without auditing individual foreign payments. The company’s own letter to the committee said calculating actual foreign-government profits would be “impractical.”^[11]

Trump Foundation

In June 2018, the New York attorney general’s office filed suit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation alleging “a pattern of persistent illegal conduct” including self-dealing transactions, the use of foundation funds to pay business and campaign expenses, and improper coordination with the 2016 campaign.^[12]

In December 2018, the Trump Foundation agreed to dissolve under court supervision.^[13] In November 2019, a New York judge ordered Trump personally to pay $2 million in damages to a court-approved list of charities to settle the case. The court found Trump had used foundation funds to settle his businesses’ legal obligations and to support his 2016 presidential campaign, including a $25,000 contribution to a political committee supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at a time when her office was reviewing fraud complaints against Trump University.^[14]

(Bondi later became Trump’s attorney general in his second term. Trump ousted her from that post in 2026, and she left the Justice Department in early April.)^[119]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Bondi is currently attorney general. Trump ousted her, and she left the Justice Department in early April 2026.

Trump University

A separate civil case, brought as a class action by former students, alleged that Trump University (which was not a university, and which Trump publicly insisted would teach his students from “the best of the best” instructors) was a fraudulent operation that misrepresented what students would receive.^[15]

In November 2016, after the election, Trump agreed to a $25 million settlement to resolve the class action and a related case brought by the New York attorney general. The settlement covered approximately 6,000 former students.^[16] Trump had previously said publicly that he would not settle. He did, two weeks after winning the presidency.

Foreign-government bookings at Trump properties

The Trump Organization’s promise to donate foreign-government profits to the Treasury did not address the larger pattern: foreign governments and foreign-government-controlled entities continued to spend money at Trump-owned properties throughout the first term.

In January 2024, House Oversight Democrats released a report based on documents from Mazars USA, Trump’s former accounting firm. The committee found that foreign governments had spent at least $7.8 million at Trump properties during the first term, with the People’s Republic of China the largest single source at more than $5.5 million. The figure covered only four properties out of the roughly 1 percent of Trump’s holdings the documents reached, which the committee said meant the true total was likely far higher.^[17]

Other documented payments during the first term include:

A lobbying firm representing the Saudi government booked the Trump International Hotel in Washington for 500 room-nights between December 2016 and February 2017, spending about $270,000 (lodging, catering, and parking) while veterans the firm recruited lobbied Congress against a 9/11-victims bill the Saudis opposed.^[18]
T-Mobile executives stayed at the Trump International Hotel at least 52 nights and spent at least $195,000 in the months after the company announced its merger with Sprint in April 2018, the largest year of patronage T-Mobile had ever extended to that hotel.^[19]
The Embassy of Kuwait moved its National Day celebration from the Four Seasons in Georgetown to the Trump International Hotel after the 2016 election, repeating the move in 2018.^[20]

The argument that mattered legally was not whether these payments happened. The records show they did. The argument was whether they qualified as “emoluments” the Constitution bans.

The emoluments lawsuits

Three major lawsuits during the first term tested that question.

CREW v. Trump was filed in federal court in New York by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, joined later by hotel and restaurant owners who competed with Trump properties.^[21]
District of Columbia and Maryland v. Trump was filed in federal court in Maryland by the state attorneys general arguing that the Trump International Hotel in Washington put their states’ competing convention business at a disadvantage.^[22]
Blumenthal v. Trump was filed by approximately 200 members of Congress arguing they had been denied the constitutional vote on foreign-government emoluments.^[23]

Each case made it through appellate review. None reached a final ruling on whether the payments violated the Constitution. In January 2021, after Trump left office, the Supreme Court vacated the lower-court rulings and remanded the cases as moot.^[24]

Legal scholars across the spectrum have noted that this outcome leaves the underlying constitutional question unresolved. The Supreme Court did not rule that the payments were permitted under the Constitution. It ruled that the cases could no longer be heard because Trump was no longer president.

Hatch Act findings

The Hatch Act is a 1939 federal statute that bars most executive-branch employees from using their official position for partisan political activity. It is enforced by the Office of Special Counsel, a separate agency from the special counsels who investigated Trump.

In June 2019, OSC issued a formal report finding that Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway had violated the Hatch Act “on numerous occasions” by criticizing Democratic presidential candidates in her official capacity. OSC recommended her removal from federal service. The Trump White House rejected the recommendation.^[25]

In November 2021, after Trump left office, OSC issued a second report finding that 13 senior Trump administration officials had violated the Hatch Act during the 2020 Republican National Convention, which was partly held on White House grounds.^[26]

What the first term established

The first-term record is the foundation for everything that follows. Key facts, documented in court records, OSC reports, and House Oversight findings:

The presidential trust arrangement did not meet OGE’s definition of a blind trust, and OGE’s director said so publicly. He resigned in July 2017. Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said the OGE director resigned over the trust arrangement. The reporting does not tie his resignation to that one issue.
The Trump Foundation was dissolved by court order, with a $2 million personal judgment against Trump for self-dealing.
Trump University settled for $25 million.
Foreign governments spent at least $7.8 million at four Trump properties tracked by House Oversight, with China the largest source.
Three major lawsuits challenging this conduct on constitutional grounds were dismissed not on the merits but as moot when Trump left office.
The Office of Special Counsel found Hatch Act violations by Counselor Kellyanne Conway and 13 senior officials around the 2020 election.

None of this resulted in criminal charges. There is a real reason for that, and it deserves an honest answer: a sitting president’s own Justice Department does not prosecute the sitting president, Congress declined to impeach on these specific grounds, and emoluments cases have a “standing” problem in court, meaning the courts struggle to identify who has the legal right to sue.^[27]

The conduct was documented. The constitutional question was never settled.

What Actually Happened: The Second Term (2025-Present)

The pattern from the first term has not narrowed. By most documented measures, it has expanded. This article cannot cover every individual scandal of the second term. What follows is a map of the six main areas, with one paragraph each and links to focused subpieces for readers who want depth.

Foreign governments paying the president

In May 2025, the government of Qatar gifted the United States a Boeing 747-8 worth approximately $400 million, intended for use as a presidential aircraft and, after that, for transfer to a future Trump presidential library. The Foreign Emoluments Clause is the most direct constitutional barrier to a gift of that scale from a foreign government to a sitting president; Congress did not vote to consent to the gift.^[28]

In late 2025, Trump received gifts including a gold bar and a Rolex from senior Swiss officials. Nine days later, his administration cut Swiss tariffs from 39 percent to 15 percent.^[29] Swiss federal prosecutors received three formal criminal complaints over the exchange.^[29]

Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, manages approximately $6.2 billion. About $2 billion of that, by Kushner’s own SEC filings, comes from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Kushner remained involved in U.S. diplomacy on the Iran war while continuing to manage the fund.^[30]

→ Full article (forthcoming): Foreign Governments Are Paying the President. The Founders Banned That.

The IRS lawsuit and the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund”

In January 2026, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department over the 2021 leak of his tax returns. The leak itself was real; a federal contractor named Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty to leaking the returns and is serving a five-year prison sentence.^[31]

The unusual feature of the case is that Trump is suing federal agencies he controls as president. The Justice Department represents both sides. In a February 2026 interview, Trump told NBC: “Essentially, the lawsuit’s been won. I guess I won a lot of money.” No court had ruled on the case at the time he said it. He added: “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”^[32]

On May 18, 2026, the Justice Department announced the settlement and the formal creation of what it named the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” set at $1.776 billion. The lawsuit is dropped. The fund is to compensate “victims of lawfare and weaponization,” in the words of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. A five-member commission appointed by Blanche will oversee disbursements. There are, according to the DOJ, no “partisan requirements” for applicants. Trump’s filing argued the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge.^[33]

Asked the same day whether individuals who committed violence on January 6 could receive payments from the fund, Trump told reporters: “It’ll all be dependent on a committee.” He added: “I didn’t do this deal. It was told to me yesterday.” Trump said the fund was dedicated to “reimbursing people who were horribly treated.” The DOJ separately resolved Trump’s two earlier administrative claims, totaling $230 million, over the FBI Russia investigation and the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation.^[33]

The same day, 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief urging Judge Kathleen Williams to block the settlement. Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee: “This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021.” Rep. Don Beyer: “He’s just stealing your money. It’s illegal and corrupt as hell. We’re fighting it in court.” Public Citizen, in a separate statement: “This scheme amounts to the creation of a January 6 payment fund.” Donald Sherman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”^[33]

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, had already flagged what she called the case’s “adverseness” problem in an April 2026 order: a lawsuit requires two parties on opposite sides, and Trump controls both sides of this one. She had ordered briefs on whether the case could proceed at all. The Trump administration’s defense compared the new fund to an Obama-era program that compensated Native American farmers who had alleged racial discrimination. That earlier program was not created to benefit allies of the president previously investigated for criminal conduct.^[33]^[34]

Within two days, the fund’s mechanics began to show. On May 20, Trump adviser Michael Caputo filed the first known claim, seeking $2.7 million as a “survivor of the illegal Russiagate investigations.” The same day, two officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, sued in federal court to block the fund, arguing it violates the 14th Amendment’s bar on paying debts “incurred in aid of insurrection.” Both Acting Attorney General Blanche and Vice President Vance had declined to rule out payments to people convicted of assaulting police on January 6. Rep. Jamie Raskin moved to subpoena Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over the fund; House Republicans blocked the subpoena on a party-line vote. By May 21 the fund had produced the broadest Republican break of the second term: at least 25 GOP senators told Blanche they opposed it, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick filed a bill to block it (drawing a public tirade from Trump), and Majority Leader Thune recessed the Senate early rather than hold a vote on it. The detail and the legal challenges are covered in the IRS settlement explainer.^[64]

The day after the announcement, the documented picture got worse. On May 19, the DOJ posted a separately signed one-page addendum to its website. The addendum, signed only by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (not by the IRS Commissioner, not by the Associate Attorney General), declares that the IRS is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from examining or prosecuting any tax return filed by Trump, his family, his company, or “related companies” before the agreement’s effective date. The amnesty was not mentioned at the Monday press conference.^[33]

The Guardian’s Sam Levine also reported, citing a same-day New York Times report, that IRS officials had recommended fighting Trump’s lawsuit. The agency settled anyway. Sen. Ron Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, called the addendum “another heinously corrupt act” and said it violates laws barring executive interference in IRS audits. Rep. Richard Neal, ranking Democrat on House Ways and Means: “corruption in the plainest sight.”^[33]

Hours after the settlement was announced, Treasury Department General Counsel Brian Morrissey resigned. Morrissey, the Treasury’s most senior lawyer, had been confirmed by the Senate roughly seven months earlier. He had previously clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and was a partner at Sidley Austin. He served in Trump’s first administration. Three sources told the New York Times he resigned over the settlement; two said they had reviewed his resignation letter. Morrissey declined to comment publicly. The Treasury statement: “Mr. Morrissey has served the United States Treasury with both honor and integrity. We wish him all the best.”^[33]

Senate response on May 19 produced the first major Republican-leadership rift on the settlement. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), asked about the fund: “Yeah, not a big fan. And I’m not sure exactly how they intend to use it… I don’t see a purpose for that.” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who had voted to convict Trump after January 6 and who had just lost his Republican primary to an opponent Trump endorsed: “We are a nation of laws, you can’t just make up things whole piece.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA, Senate Judiciary chair) was “not bothered” and cited prior payouts to former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as precedent. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME, Senate Appropriations chair) pressed Blanche on the legal basis for commission decisions; Blanche said only the five Blanche-appointed commissioners would review the claims.^[33]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Cassidy lost a primary runoff. It was his primary, held May 16.

Pressed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on whether a January 6 pardonee later convicted of five counts of child sex crimes would be eligible for a payout, Blanche declined to say no. Van Hollen: “I find that obscene.” Van Hollen to Blanche: “You are still acting as the president’s personal lawyer. It’s hard to justify giving you any funds.” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA): the fund is “nothing short of the sitting president of the United States looting the Treasury for his own gain. This is corruption that has never been more blatant.”^[33]

→ Full article (forthcoming): How a President Can Sue His Own Government for $10 Billion.

The presidential brand

On January 17, 2025, three days before his second inauguration, Trump launched a meme cryptocurrency called $TRUMP. The token had no underlying business; its value rested on the president’s name and on speculation about its future. Trump-affiliated entities controlled approximately 80 percent of the supply. By May 2025, more than $320 million in trading fees had been routed to wallets tied to the project’s creators, the analytics firm Chainalysis found. The coin’s valuation peaked at roughly $15 billion before crashing about 90 percent. About 764,000 wallets lost money. In July 2026, a New York Times analysis of blockchain data from the firm Nansen put the toll higher: roughly 989,000 investors, about two out of every three who traded the coin, lost a combined $3.8 billion, counting paper losses. Trump’s own financial disclosure for 2025 reports $635 million in royalties from a license agreement tied to the coin.^[68] Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) called it “the single most corrupt act ever committed by a president” and introduced legislation that would bar presidents, members of Congress and senior officials from issuing or promoting digital assets.^[35]

A parallel venture, World Liberty Financial, is a cryptocurrency platform with substantial holdings from the Trump family. In August 2025, Alt5 Sigma, a fintech company tied to World Liberty Financial, said in a press release filed with the SEC that “Eric Trump became a director on the Company’s board of directors.” An August 29 filing then said that, after discussion with Nasdaq, “Both Eric Trump and Zachary Folkman have been designated as observers.”^[112] On May 15, 2026, after MS NOW host Jen Psaki said on air that he “sits on the board,” Eric Trump wrote on X that he would sue her and the network: “I have NEVER been on the board of ALT5—not now, not ever.” That night Psaki aired a clip from an August 2025 Nasdaq ceremony in which an announcer welcomed “Alt5 board member Eric Trump,” and she acknowledged, “We do know that he’s not currently a director on the board.” The filings show the company announcing him as a director and recasting him as an observer within weeks. They do not show whether he ever formally served as a director.^[36]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version placed Eric Trump’s denial in a “May 2026 broadcast” and said Psaki displayed Alt5’s press release identifying him as a board member. He made the denial on X on May 15; Psaki aired a video clip, cited the company’s filing, and acknowledged he is not currently a director.

Trump Mobile, a separate venture launched in 2025, took $100 deposits from supporters for a gold-shelled smartphone called the T1. The phone has been promised for delivery in August 2025, then November 2025, then December 2025, then January 2026. In April 2026, the company quietly modified its preorder terms to add a clause stating the company “does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase.” When Fortune reported this on May 11, 2026, the phone had not shipped.^[37] Trump Mobile’s chief executive, Pat O’Brien, then said preordered phones would begin shipping the week of May 11, and outlets reported deliveries by May 20. In September, Trump Mobile raised the T1’s price from $499 to $749, according to CNET.^[113]

The clearest current example is not a product but a booking. The G20 Leaders’ Summit on December 14 and 15, 2026 is scheduled at Trump National Doral Miami, a golf resort the president owns and profits from. He announced it himself in the Oval Office in September 2025, saying “everybody wants it there,” and answered the obvious question directly: “We will not make any money on it. We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money, there’s no money in it.” The White House says the resort will host “at-cost, and will receive no profit from either the State Department or a foreign government.” If that is right, the Emoluments Clauses are not engaged.

The problem is that there is no way to check. For the smaller G20 meetings held through 2026, the State Department published a list of requirements in the Federal Register and cities submitted bids; Washington, Asheville and Atlanta were selected that way. The Leaders’ Summit went through no such process. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the State Department and the Secret Service for the records showing how the site was chosen, received nothing, and sued. No document has been produced showing any other location was considered, and no figure for what the property takes in has been published by anyone. Trump announced the 2020 G7 for the same resort in 2019, said the Secret Service preferred the site, and reversed after objections from both parties; CREW later obtained internal Secret Service documents that contradicted the claim. On September 23, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration had invited Vladimir Putin to attend, and the Kremlin said the same day that it welcomes the invitation.^[101]

A different kind of example surfaced the same week, and it is about what happens when the rules that normally apply to a building project do not. The Washington Post reported that James McCrery II, the first architect on the White House ballroom and a Trump appointee to the Commission of Fine Arts, resigned in October 2025 after repeatedly warning that the design the president wanted did not give guests adequate emergency exits and did nothing to stop a kitchen fire from spreading into the event space above. According to two people with knowledge of the discussions, Trump’s answer was that building codes do not apply to White House construction: “I am the code.” White House meeting notes obtained by the Post record “Life safety — big concern” in September 2025 and, after the architect left, “Life safety — needs POTUS buy in.” The reason the question can even arise is structural: these projects run through the Executive Residence, which is not a federal agency and so falls outside the rules that bind agencies, and the District of Columbia cannot enforce local building codes on federal property. The White House says it is “factually false and totally inaccurate” that the departure was “in any way associated with code issues” and that life-safety issues “have been addressed and resolved continuously as the design has evolved.” The firm that replaced McCrery says the complex “has been designed to conform to applicable national building code standards.” McCrery himself has said nothing about why he left.^[102]

One more item belongs here, and it is the simplest of all of them to check, because the disclosure is printed on the ad itself. On the night of September 23, 2026, a 30-second commercial promoting Trump began running on Fox News and Newsmax. It looks like a campaign ad, and near the end a line at the bottom of the screen reads “paid for by the U.S. government.” The White House had posted a shorter version on its YouTube channel ten days earlier. It defends the spot as “educational and unapologetically patriotic,” one of its “public service announcements” meant to remind Americans “to love their country.” For almost a week it did not say which part of the government paid. On September 29 the Wall Street Journal reported, and Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, confirmed, that the money came from Customs and Border Protection funds in the 2025 budget law. Two Democratic senators say the department appears to have set aside $20 million. The administration has not confirmed that on the record, but on September 29 an administration official told Axios that “The Department of Homeland Security is placing the ad buys using money from an existing budget.”^[107]^[108] The first buy was estimated at $14,000, which is small. It did not stay small: by September 28 there were at least four spots, one of them a rerun of a 2024 Trump campaign ad with the campaign ending cut off, and by September 29 AdImpact’s estimate had passed $2.5 million, a figure it says is incomplete.

There are two separate rules in play and they are often run together. Federal appropriations law prohibits spending public money for “publicity or propaganda purposes,” which the Government Accountability Office has long read to bar material whose obvious purpose is self-promotion or that is purely partisan. The Hatch Act is a different rule, it bars federal employees from campaigning on government time, and it does not apply to the president; the allegation there runs only to employees who worked on the ad. No finding of illegality exists. On September 25 the watchdog group Public Citizen asked the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Special Counsel to rule on it, and neither has acted. Two more complaints followed. Public Citizen asked the Federal Communications Commission on September 29 to have broadcasters stop airing the ads, and on September 30 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Homeland Security inspector general to investigate whether the spending broke federal budget law. The FCC’s chairman, Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, answered the same day: “There’s nothing in there that strikes me to merit any sort of FCC review.”^[110] In the White House’s favor, the ads say who paid for them, and the Government Accountability Office has treated hidden sponsorship as central to its findings of covert propaganda. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, made the broader case on the Senate floor on September 29, when she blocked a resolution declaring that such ads “should not be paid for by the United States government.” Presidents of both parties have aired public service announcements, she argued. “When a Democratic president tells Americans what to do, it’s a public service,” she said. “When this president tells Americans that liberty is worth defending, it’s suddenly a problem.”^[109] What has happened since is political rather than legal: on September 24 Sen. Maggie Hassan asked the White House chief of staff for the cost, the contractors and the source of the money, and the top Democrats on the appropriations committees asked that the ads be pulled. By then a second government-paid ad, about the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was airing on CBS and other networks. A White House official told CBS News the ads “are clearly not political,” and noted, “The President is not on the ballot and the ads don’t have a call to action.”^[105] Several outlets called it illegal in their headlines while their own articles said only that critics do. What is on the record is bipartisan discomfort: Sen. Thom Tillis said “using taxpayer dollars, it feels like Viktor Orban,” and Sen. John Kennedy said he doesn’t “generally like to see politicians use public money to pay for their own campaign ads.”^[103] After the campaign-ad rerun, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, wrote that it “has been done before and is completely legal… in banana republics.”^[106] Senate Majority Leader John Thune put the Republican objection most simply: “It’s a great message. I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.”^[107]

→ Full article (forthcoming): When the Presidency Is a Brand: The Crypto, the Coin, and the Phone.

Stock trades

On May 14, 2026, the Office of Government Ethics published Trump’s first-quarter 2026 financial disclosure. The filing covered about 3,640 trades over three months (2,345 purchases and 1,296 sales, mostly of individual stocks), roughly 40 per day. The cumulative value, reported in the OGE’s broad ranges, was between approximately $220 million and $750 million.^[38]^[111]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said the filing covered more than 3,700 trades. It lists about 3,640.

The disclosure includes specific transactions where the timing is in the public record. According to NOTUS’s reporting on the filing:

Trump’s account bought between $500,001 and $1 million of Nvidia stock on January 6, 2026. One week later, on January 13, the Commerce Department approved the sale of certain Nvidia chips to China. A second Nvidia purchase, of $1 million to $5 million, followed on February 10.^[111] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version tied the Commerce Department’s approval to the February 10 Nvidia purchase. The approval came a week after the January 6 purchase.
Trump’s first-quarter purchases of Palantir stock totaled at least $260,000. The administration awarded Palantir a $1 billion contract for Department of Homeland Security deportation software in February 2026.^[39]
Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million of Axon stock on February 10, 2026. Axon makes Tasers. Two weeks later, on February 24, ICE announced a $220 million Taser-spending plan.^[39]

The Trump Organization’s response was that Trump’s holdings are “maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions.” The White House said the “assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”^[38]

The day after the disclosure was published, May 15, Eric Trump, a Trump Organization executive and one of the trustees of his father’s assets, responded on X to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who had raised the Nvidia trades: “All of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes. To suggest that individual stocks are being bought or sold, at the discretion of any member of the Trump family, would be a lie and blatantly false.” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) responded by linking to the filing, which lists 15 separate Nvidia transactions: “Outright lies. Trump’s assets aren’t in a blind trust, and he bought and sold individual Nvidia stock in 15 separate transactions totaling millions of dollars.” The filing lists individual companies by name, not the broad-market index funds Eric Trump described. It does not show who directed the trades.^[40]^[111]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Eric Trump spoke two days after the disclosure and quoted him as saying “every single asset of my father is wrapped up in a blind trust.” He posted on X the next day, May 15, and his words are quoted above.

Three later filings extended the same record.

On June 18, 2026, a purchase of up to $500,000 in Boeing stock was recorded in Trump’s disclosures. The same day, the U.S. Navy awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $880 million for training systems for P-8A Poseidon aircrews. Snopes examined the claim and confirmed both events occurred on that date.^[73] What the filing cannot show is sequence: disclosures report date ranges and dollar ranges, not times of day, so the document establishes that the two things happened on the same date and nothing more.

The Axon purchase has more detail than the Q1 filing showed on its own. In June, CNBC reported that the specifications in ICE’s $220 million Taser solicitation appeared written in a way that would foreclose any bidder other than Axon, which makes roughly 90 percent of Tasers sold in the United States. Axon’s stock rose more than 30 percent the week after the notice posted. CNBC also reported it found no evidence Trump knew of or was involved in the procurement, and no contract had been awarded. A former ICE official, Deborah Fleischaker, put the ordinary standard plainly: “It is not smart to buy stock in a company that was impacted by the decisions you would be making.”^[74]

Then the annual picture arrived. On June 30, 2026, OGE released Trump’s annual disclosure. Bloomberg’s reading of the filing found at least $1.4 billion in 2025 income from crypto and memecoin ventures, including more than $594 million from World Liberty Financial token sales, a company co-founded by Trump, his sons, and the diplomat Steven Witkoff. Roughly $635 million traced to a licensing arrangement around the $TRUMP meme coin. A $10,000 stake in that coin bought on Inauguration Day was worth about $415 by the time of the filing. Nearly $60 million came from foreign real-estate licensing in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, Romania, Vietnam, the Philippines, Oman, and Scotland. The filing recorded roughly 21,000 individual stock transactions across the year, against about 800 the year before.^[75]

Asked about it while boarding Air Force One, Trump said, “they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them… I don’t even speak to them,” describing the arrangement as a “blind account.” He also offered a broader defense: “Because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting… so we’re all profiting.” The largest single categories in his own filing were crypto and foreign licensing revenue, not gains on stocks.^[75]

The detention business

GEO Group and CoreCivic, both publicly traded, are the country’s two largest private prison companies.^[77] They own or operate facilities and contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which pays them per detainee per day. When detention capacity expands, their revenue expands with it. That makes them an unusually direct case: the president sets the enforcement policy, and the policy sets the companies’ revenue.

The monthly reports have continued. The filing covering July 2026, posted on September 22, numbers its own rows 1 through 1,156 and is worth between roughly $79 million and $270 million; June’s was 1,051 trades and a similar range. Unlike the annual disclosure, these forms date each transaction to the day, which is how CNBC noticed that the portfolio sold between $250,001 and $500,000 of Northrop Grumman on July 20, the day Trump signed an executive order tightening supply-chain rules for defense contractors. The same report carries the qualifier that belongs with it: the disclosure does not show what time the trade occurred or who made the decision, and the portfolio bought Northrop back three days later. The White House answer has not changed and is worth stating fairly, because it is a real answer: the holdings sit in discretionary accounts run by outside managers using model portfolios that track indexes, so no individual purchase is the president’s choice. The standing objection is equally simple. He declined to place his assets in a blind trust, which means he can see what is being bought and sold, and his signature is on the form.^[98]

In July 2026, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington published an analysis of Trump’s disclosures finding 29 trades in those two companies since the second term began. The first came on day ten of the term. The trades total between $281,029 and $990,000, and Trump’s account traded the stocks in every month of 2025 except August and December.^[76]

The timing of one cluster is documented on both sides. In February 2025, CoreCivic’s chief executive told investors that Trump’s immigration policies would produce “the most significant growth in our company’s history,” and GEO’s executive chairman described “an unprecedented opportunity.” That same month, Trump’s account made seven purchases in the two companies.^[76]

The revenue followed. GEO Group received $2.1 billion in ICE contract obligations in 2025, according to OpenSecrets, and its 2025 profits rose nearly 700 percent to more than $250 million. CoreCivic’s net income rose nearly 70 percent to $116.5 million, with more than $650 million in ICE contract obligations. NPR reported in August 2026 that the two companies together announced roughly $1.4 billion in combined quarterly revenue.^[76]^[77]^[114]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said GEO Group’s ICE contracts make up roughly half its revenue. That share is not supported by the sources and has been removed; the $2.1 billion figure is OpenSecrets’ count of 2025 ICE contract obligations.

The money moved in the other direction too, and the personnel moved between the two. GEO Group’s corporate PAC was the first to max out to Trump’s 2024 campaign; GEO-linked giving to the campaign, affiliated entities, and the inauguration totaled nearly $2 million, plus $1 million to his super PAC in 2026. CoreCivic and its chief executive gave $816,600 to the campaign and inaugural committee. Acting ICE Director David Venturella is a former GEO Group executive who was a paid GEO consultant until January 2025. Border czar Tom Homan was also a paid GEO consultant, and Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for GEO Group before joining the administration.^[76]

Several things need saying precisely here, because this is the section where overstatement would be easiest. No evidence has been published showing that Trump directed detention policy in order to benefit his holdings. The disclosure system reports monthly ranges, which means no individual trade can be matched to an individual decision, in either direction. The Trump Organization’s position is that outside brokers control the purchases. And the federal criminal conflict-of-interest statute, which would prohibit this conduct by nearly any other executive-branch official, does not apply to the president.

What the record does establish is the structure: the president holds a financial position in two companies whose revenue depends on a policy he sets, he has never used a blind trust, and the people administering that policy came from those companies. CREW also set the companies’ record 2025 profits beside the current fiscal year, which is the deadliest on record for people in ICE custody.^[76]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version described GEO Group and CoreCivic as running most immigration detention and said their most profitable year was also the deadliest fiscal year for deaths in ICE custody. They are the country’s two largest private prison companies, and CREW’s record-profit year (2025) and its deadliest fiscal year are different periods.

The sons’ holdings, and a tariff

The conflicts documented above involve the president’s own accounts. A separate category involves his adult sons, and it works differently because no federal ethics rule reaches them at all. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump hold no government office, so the conflict-of-interest statute, the disclosure requirements, and the ethics-office review that would apply to an appointee apply to neither of them.

On August 13, 2026, Trump signed a proclamation imposing tariffs of up to 100 percent on imported drones and components, following a Section 232 national security investigation. On the day of the announcement, the drone maker Unusual Machines rose 24.2 percent, Red Cat 8.8 percent, Kratos 2.9 percent, and AeroVironment 1.3 percent. CNBC reported that Unusual Machines added Donald Trump Jr. to its advisory board in November 2024, and that he held 331,580 shares as of November 27, 2024.^[80]

The strongest case for the tariff is real: China dominates the drone market, and dependence on Chinese drones and parts has concerned officials in both parties for years. A tariff protecting domestic manufacturers protects all of them, not one company. Nothing published shows Trump Jr. took part in the Section 232 process.

It is also not the only such position. Both sons hold equity in Powerus, a drone-defense company selling interceptors to Gulf states that are under attack in a war the president started, and Trump Jr.’s venture firm 1789 Capital invested in Vulcan Elements three months before a $620 million Pentagon loan that White House Senior Counselor Peter Navarro initiated, after which the company’s valuation rose roughly tenfold.^[66]^[80]

The pattern across the three is the same shape: federal action in a sector, and a family stake in that sector. Whether that is coincidence, or the ordinary result of a family investing in defense while a relative runs defense policy, is a judgment the documents do not settle. What they do establish is that the mechanism designed to answer that question, disclosure and ethics review, does not apply to any of it.

Donors and contracts

In June 2026, Public Citizen published an analysis of the corporate donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project. Of 27 known corporate donors, 14 won more than $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts within six months. Lockheed Martin accounted for most of it, about $43.8 billion. Booz Allen Hamilton received more than $4.2 billion and Palantir just over $1 billion, with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar, and T-Mobile also gaining business. The report noted that a number of the same donor companies face federal enforcement actions that have since been suspended.^[78]

Correlation is not the same as exchange, and the report does not claim to have found an agreement. The reason the pattern is documented anyway is that the ordinary safeguard against this appearance, a wall between people seeking federal contracts and people funding the president’s projects, is the thing that is absent.

Pardons

The federal pardon power is one of the most absolute powers the Constitution gives a president, and presidents from both parties have used it controversially. What is distinctive about the second-term pattern is the documented connection between pardons and money that flowed in the other direction.

Trevor Milton founded the electric-truck company Nikola and was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors.^[41] He was pardoned in March 2025, which erased roughly $680 million in restitution owed to shareholders, according to CBS News.^[117] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version put Milton’s fraud at approximately $660 million. CBS News reports that his pardon erased roughly $680 million in restitution.
Changpeng Zhao founded the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and pleaded guilty to money laundering. He was pardoned in 2025.^[42]
Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality television personalities, were convicted of $17.8 million in tax and bank fraud.^[43] They were pardoned in 2025.
Joseph Schwartz, owner of a nursing-home chain where ProPublica found residents had been left in feces with maggots, was pardoned in November 2025, three months into a federal prison sentence for stealing $39 million in employee payroll taxes. At least three families won multimillion-dollar wrongful-death judgments against him, one for nearly $19 million, and none have collected, ProPublica reported. Schwartz paid more than $1 million to lobbyists to seek the pardon.^[44] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version of this item gave his first name as Paul; it is Joseph. It also said a Pennsylvania jury found his facilities liable and that the pardon erased $19 million in restitution. The sources describe wrongful-death judgments, one for nearly $19 million, that families have not collected, and do not name the court.

In May 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House was planning to announce approximately 250 additional pardons, timed either to Trump’s June 14 birthday or to the July 4 anniversary of American independence.^[45]

Reps. Dave Min (D-CA) and Raul Ruiz (D-CA), with Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), have opened a formal investigation into whether pardon recipients secured their clemency “through intermediaries, financial contributions, or other forms of influence.” Letters demanding contracts have gone to more than a dozen recipients.^[46]

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office found that Trump’s pardons and commutations across both of his terms have erased nearly $2 billion in restitution, forfeitures and fines. More than $1.3 billion of that figure is court-ordered victim restitution; House Judiciary Democrats, in a separate analysis, put the restitution erased at $1.3 billion. Fraud victims will not receive it. The remaining hundreds of millions are fines and forfeitures owed to the federal government for Medicare fraud, tax fraud and other financial crimes.^[47]^[117]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version described the $2 billion as a joint finding by Newsom’s office and House Judiciary Democrats and did not say it covers both of Trump’s terms. The nearly $2 billion figure is Newsom’s office’s count across both terms.

In July 2026, Bloomberg documented something the pardon power had not been used for before: Trump has pardoned corporations. Nine companies received clemency in his second term, erasing roughly $200 million in financial penalties. The pardon power has always been understood to apply to convicted individuals, and legal historians told Bloomberg the closest precedent for extending it to companies is 17th-century England under King Charles II.^[79]

Two of the nine show the range. The crypto exchange BitMEX was fined $100 million in January for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, the law requiring financial institutions to guard against money laundering; the pardon meant it never paid. Ryan LaLone and his Michigan trucking-parts company were pardoned over diesel-emissions tampering, erasing a $750,000 fine. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) published a report on the pattern.^[79]

Why this matters beyond the dollar figures: a criminal fine is the government’s main deterrent against corporate crime, because a company cannot be imprisoned. If fines can be cancelled at the White House, the deterrent becomes a negotiation.

The cabinet

The pattern is not limited to the president himself. ProPublica’s analysis of approximately 3,200 financial-disclosure records covering more than 1,500 second-term appointees documents widespread ties between officials and the industries they regulate.^[48] What follows is a partial roster of the most-documented cases.

Elon Musk, who served as head of the Department of Government Efficiency through May 2025, oversaw cuts to federal programs while his companies held federal contracts worth approximately $20 billion. ProPublica’s database of about 3,200 financial-disclosure records documents ties between appointees and the industries they regulate.^[48] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said ProPublica documented at least 3,200 undisclosed financial conflicts. The 3,200 figure is the number of disclosure records in its database, not a count of conflicts.
Stephen Feinberg, Deputy Secretary of Defense, founded Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm. He filed paperwork saying he divested from Cerberus, but his ethics records let him keep contracting with the firm for tax compliance, accounting and health care coverage, an arrangement that, according to the documents, could continue indefinitely. Feinberg oversees the office in charge of the Golden Dome missile-defense project, and ProPublica identified at least four companies owned or majority-held by Cerberus that have received Golden Dome contracts. A Cerberus spokesperson told The Guardian that Feinberg divested and “is not involved with the operations of Cerberus or any of its portfolio companies in any way.”^[48]^[120] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Feinberg received an open-ended extension on the requirement to divest and called Cerberus defense-focused. Feinberg certified that he divested, with an ethics provision letting him keep using the firm for tax, accounting and health care services, and Cerberus is a private equity firm whose companies hold Pentagon contracts.
Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General, held at least $159,000 in cryptocurrency assets at the time he ordered the Justice Department to scale back enforcement against multiple cryptocurrency companies.^[48]
Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general until early April 2026, received a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation in 2013, at a time when her office was reviewing fraud complaints against Trump University. Her office subsequently declined to join New York’s case against Trump University.^[14]
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held stock in defense contractors during his confirmation, according to disclosures Senate Armed Services Democrats raised at his hearings. The Financial Times reported that Hegseth’s broker contacted BlackRock in February 2026, before the Iran war began, about a multimillion-dollar investment in a defense-industrials ETF that holds shares in RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir. The investment did not go through because the fund was unavailable to the broker’s clients.^[51]
FBI Director Kash Patel has used the FBI’s Gulfstream V jet for at least 10 trips with personal travel components, including a flight to Milan during the 2026 Winter Olympics and a flight to Philadelphia in May 2025 for a concert his girlfriend’s contacts arranged. The May 2025 Philadelphia trip included a private suite priced between $35,000 and $50,000, and Patel declined to tell the New York Times who paid for it.^[49]
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy filmed a five-part YouTube reality series funded by Boeing, Shell, Toyota, United Airlines, and Royal Caribbean. All five companies are regulated by the Department of Transportation. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an ethics complaint with the DOT inspector general in May 2026.^[50]
Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security (removed March 5, 2026), was the first cabinet secretary fired in the second term. The trigger was a $220 million no-bid advertising-contract scandal: the campaign featured Noem herself on horseback and was awarded to Safe America Media, a firm incorporated in Delaware 8 to 11 days before it received its $143 million share. Most of that money was subcontracted to a firm whose CEO is married to Noem’s former spokesperson. Separately, in November and December 2025, DHS and Customs and Border Protection awarded just over $1 billion in border-wall contracts to SLSCO Ltd., a Galveston, Texas construction firm; CBP announced them on December 18, 2025. The Daily Beast reported in March 2026 that Noem signed off on them personally, as she did with all DHS contracts over $100,000, and that SLSCO had been accused in a federal lawsuit of “human and weapons smuggling” across the southern border. The plaintiffs later dropped the case, so the allegations were never tested at trial.^[57]^[58]^[116] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Noem approved the SLSCO contracts days before her removal. They were awarded in November and December 2025 and announced December 18, 2025; the Daily Beast reported her sign-off in March 2026.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Secretary of Labor (resigned April 20, 2026), departed after a Department of Labor inspector general investigation documented strip-club trips on taxpayer-funded work travel, allegations of drinking on the job, and her two top aides allegedly steering department grants to favored political operatives. Two female staffers had separately accused her husband of sexual assault inside DOL headquarters; he was banned from the building in February 2026.^[59]
Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, admitted under Senate oath on February 10, 2026 that he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island for lunch in December 2012, directly contradicting his earlier public claim that he had cut off all contact with Epstein after a 2005 encounter. Justice Department documents show Lutnick was in contact with Epstein as recently as 2018, a decade after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor. The White House rejected bipartisan calls for his resignation.^[60]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, amended his annual ethics disclosure in September 2026. It lists more than $250,000 in 2025 gifts from Gavin de Becker, a security consultant whose firm provided protection to Kennedy and who was a major donor to his 2024 presidential campaign: nearly $97,000 in flights to Fiji, almost $45,000 for one round trip to Greece, and the use of de Becker’s Washington vacation home. It also lists $4 million in book advances from Skyhorse Publishing, $2 million each for two forthcoming titles, against a secretary’s salary of about $250,000. A public servant of his rank is not permitted to write books for pay while in office. No enforcement body has found a violation, the rules do allow gifts from personal friends, and de Becker says the two have been friends for years; HHS says Kennedy complies with all requirements. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that HHS told congressional appropriators it was moving about $12 million out of its Office of Minority Health to help cover Kennedy’s security costs, which rose from roughly $10 million to $17 million while previous secretaries ran about $5 million. That transfer rests on that one report and has not been independently confirmed. What is documented is that on August 25 the office terminated 16 grants worth $38 million, among them postpartum nurse visits and infant-mortality work, and redirected its priorities toward “the root causes of infertility.” HHS says the cuts “reflect HHS priorities and programmatic assessments—not the Secretary’s security needs.”^[99]

The three cabinet officials who have actually been removed (Noem, Bondi briefly, and Chavez-DeRemer) are all women Trump personally selected. That observation is the source’s, not this article’s, but the pattern is the source’s too.^[59]

→ Full article (forthcoming): The Cabinet Conflicts: Who’s Getting Paid and By Whom.

Timeline

The same record, in chronological order. Footnote numbers point to the Sources list at the bottom of the article.

Before the first term

2005-2010. Trump University operates as a real-estate seminar business, advertising “the best of the best” instructors. Two class-action lawsuits and a $40 million civil suit by the New York attorney general follow.^[15]
November 18, 2016. Ten days before the San Diego class-action trial, Trump agrees to a $25 million settlement covering roughly 7,000 former Trump University students.^[16]

First term (2017-2021)

January 11, 2017. Trump and attorney Sheri Dillon announce the first-term ethics arrangement: Trump steps back from day-to-day management of the Trump Organization; his sons run the company; foreign-government profits will be donated to the Treasury.^[7]
January 11, 2017. OGE Director Walter Shaub gives a speech at the Brookings Institution calling the arrangement “not a blind trust” and “not even halfway blind.” OGE recommends Trump divest.^[7]^[8]
January 2017. CREW files the first emoluments suit in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Maryland and the District of Columbia file a separate emoluments case; about 200 members of Congress later file Blumenthal v. Trump.^[21]
December 2016 to February 2017. A Saudi-funded lobbying firm books 500 room-nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, spending about $270,000 on lodging, catering, and parking.^[18]
February 25, 2017. The Kuwaiti embassy moves its National Day celebration from the Four Seasons in Georgetown to the Trump International Hotel, repeating the move in 2018.^[20]
July 6, 2017. Walter Shaub resigns from OGE, citing limits on the agency’s independence.^[9]
2018. The Trump Organization sends the Treasury a check for $151,470 as its accounting of foreign-government profits for fiscal year 2017, without auditing individual foreign payments.^[10]^[11]
April 29, 2018. T-Mobile and Sprint announce their merger. Nine T-Mobile executives, including CEO John Legere, book a three-day stay at Trump International Hotel the next day. T-Mobile executives stay there at least 52 nights and spend at least $195,000 in the months that follow.^[19]
June 14, 2018. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood files suit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation alleging “a pattern of persistent illegal conduct.”^[12]
December 18, 2018. The Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve under court supervision.^[13]
June 13, 2019. The Office of Special Counsel issues a formal report finding Counselor Kellyanne Conway in repeated violation of the Hatch Act. OSC recommends her removal. The White House rejects the recommendation.^[25]
November 7, 2019. A New York court orders Trump personally to pay $2 million in damages for misusing Trump Foundation funds, including a $25,000 contribution to a Florida political committee supporting state Attorney General Pam Bondi while her office was reviewing Trump University complaints.^[14]
January 25, 2021. Five days after Trump leaves office, the Supreme Court vacates the lower-court rulings in the three emoluments cases and dismisses them as moot. The conduct is not addressed on the merits.^[22]^[23]^[24]
2021. IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn leaks Trump’s tax returns to The New York Times and ProPublica. The leak reveals years in which Trump paid little or no federal income tax.^[31]
November 9, 2021. OSC issues a second report finding that 13 senior Trump administration officials, including Pompeo, Meadows, Miller, Kushner, and McEnany, violated the Hatch Act around the 2020 election. By statute, only the president can discipline them.^[26]

Between the terms (2022-2024)

October 2022. Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola, is convicted of securities and wire fraud.^[41] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said prosecutors put investor losses at more than $660 million. The figure our sources support is the roughly $680 million in restitution his pardon erased (see March 2025).
November 2022. Todd and Julie Chrisley are sentenced to 12 and 7 years respectively, with $17.8 million in restitution, for bank fraud and tax evasion.^[43]
November 21, 2023. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleads guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Binance pays $4.3 billion in penalties; Zhao pays a $50 million fine.^[42]
December 18, 2023. Trevor Milton is sentenced to four years in prison.^[41]
January 4, 2024. House Oversight Democrats release a report based on Mazars documents showing Trump received at least $7.8 million in payments from at least 20 foreign governments during the first term, with China the largest single source at more than $5.5 million.^[10]^[17]
January 30, 2024. Charles Littlejohn is sentenced to five years in prison, the statutory maximum.^[31]

Second term (2025-2026)

January 17, 2025. Three days before the inauguration, Trump launches the $TRUMP meme cryptocurrency. Trump-affiliated entities control roughly 80 percent of the supply. The coin generates more than $320 million in trading fees in 2025.^[35]
January 20, 2025. Trump is inaugurated for a second term. On his first day back, he rescinds the Biden order requiring appointees to sign an ethics pledge.^[48] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Trump fired 17 inspectors general and removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics on his first day. Those removals came on January 24 and February 10, 2025.
January 24, 2025. The administration fires about 17 independent inspectors general.^[115]
January 31, 2025. Acting SEC Enforcement Director Sanjay Wadhwa departs the agency after more than 21 years of service.^[52]
February 10, 2025. Trump removes David Huitema as director of the Office of Government Ethics.^[115]
February 10, 2026. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admits under Senate oath that he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in December 2012, contradicting his earlier public claim that he had cut off contact with Epstein after 2005. The White House rejects bipartisan calls for resignation.^[60]
February 2026. Labor Department bans Dr. Shawn DeRemer, husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, from headquarters after two female staffers allege he sexually assaulted them inside the federal building.^[59]
March 3, 2026. The top two aides to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer are forced to resign amid an inspector general investigation into a “toxic” workplace and alleged grant-steering.^[59]
March 5, 2026. Trump fires DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the first cabinet removal of the second term, after a $220 million no-bid advertising-contract scandal. The $143 million share went to a Delaware firm incorporated 8 to 11 days before its contract was awarded.^[57]
April 20, 2026. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigns, the third woman in Trump’s cabinet to depart amid scandal. Inspector general findings include strip-club trips on taxpayer-funded work travel and grant-steering by her senior aides.^[59]
March 2025. Trump pardons Trevor Milton, erasing roughly $680 million in restitution owed to Nikola shareholders, according to CBS News.^[117] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version put the restitution at $660 million.
May 21, 2025. The Trump administration officially accepts the Boeing 747-8 gift from Qatar, valued at roughly $400 million. Norman Eisen, a former White House ethics counsel, says, “it’s so obviously, a violation of the emoluments clause.” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s office called it “The Largest Foreign Bribe To A President In Modern History.”^[28]
2025. Trump issues a series of pardons and commutations. Counting clemency from both of his terms, Governor Newsom’s office later puts the restitution, forfeitures and fines erased at nearly $2 billion.^[47]^[117] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version dated this item to summer 2025, credited the pardons to “Trump and the Trump Organization,” and did not say the nearly $2 billion figure covers both terms.
October 2025. Construction crews demolish the East Wing of the White House to begin work on the Trump ballroom project, without congressional approval. The National Trust for Historic Preservation sues in December.^[56]
October 23, 2025. Trump pardons Changpeng Zhao.^[42]
November 4, 2025. Rolex CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour and MKS PAMP chairman Marwan Shakarchi present Trump with a Rolex table clock and a one-kilogram gold bar engraved with his name during an Oval Office meeting. The Swiss delegation seeks tariff relief.^[29]
November 13, 2025. Nine days after the Oval Office gifts, Trump cuts the U.S. tariff on Switzerland from 39 percent to 15 percent.^[29]
November 2025. Trump pardons Joseph Schwartz, a nursing-home operator who had served three months of a sentence for stealing $39 million in payroll taxes. Families who won wrongful-death judgments against him, one for nearly $19 million, have not collected, ProPublica reported. Lobbying records show Schwartz paid about $1 million to lobbyists to seek the pardon.^[44] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said court records show his family will not have to pay nearly $19 million in wrongful-death judgments. ProPublica reported that the families have not collected; it does not say the pardon erased the judgments.
November 28, 2025. Swiss federal prosecutors confirm receipt of three criminal complaints over the Oval Office gift exchange.^[29]
December 18, 2025. Customs and Border Protection announces two border-wall contracts, awarded in November and December and worth just over $1 billion combined, to SLSCO Ltd., a Texas firm once accused in a since-dismissed federal lawsuit of “human and weapons smuggling.” The Daily Beast later reports that Noem signed off on them personally.^[58]^[116] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version dated this item March 13, 2026, and described the contracts as approved in Noem’s final days. March 13 is when the Daily Beast reported her sign-off.
January 6, 2026. Trump’s account buys between $500,001 and $1 million of Nvidia stock. A week later, on January 13, the Commerce Department approves the sale of certain Nvidia chips to China.^[111]
January 29, 2026. Trump and the Trump Organization file a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Department over the Littlejohn leak.^[32]
February 5, 2026. In an NBC interview, Trump tells reporter Tom Llamas: “Essentially, the lawsuit’s been won. I guess I won a lot of money,” and adds, “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”^[32]
February 10, 2026. OGE filings later show Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million each of Nvidia and Axon stock on this single day.^[38]^[39] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version tied the Commerce Department’s Nvidia chip approval to this purchase. It followed the January 6 purchase.
February 2026. The administration awards Palantir Technologies a $1 billion contract for Department of Homeland Security deportation software. Trump’s first-quarter Palantir purchases total at least $260,000.^[39]
February 24, 2026. ICE announces a $220 million Taser-spending plan. Two weeks earlier, Trump had purchased $1-5 million of Axon stock.^[39]
March 5, 2026. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office publishes its analysis: Trump’s pardons and commutations across both of his terms have erased nearly $2 billion in restitution, forfeitures and fines. House Judiciary Democrats separately put the victim restitution erased at $1.3 billion.^[47] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version called this a joint analysis and did not say the total covers both terms.
March 2026. ProPublica publishes a database of approximately 3,200 financial-disclosure records covering more than 1,500 Trump appointees, documenting widespread conflicts including Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg’s continuing service arrangements with Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm he founded, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s $159,000+ in crypto assets.^[48] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version described Feinberg’s arrangement as an open-ended extension on divestiture. He certified that he divested.
March 23, 2026. Bloomberg reports that Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners has surged to $6.2 billion in assets, with roughly $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Kushner remains involved in U.S.-Iran diplomacy.^[30]
March 31, 2026. The Financial Times reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s broker sought a multimillion-dollar investment in a defense-industrials ETF in February 2026, before the Iran war began. The investment did not go through because the fund was unavailable to the broker’s clients.^[51]
April 17, 2026. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) opens a House Judiciary investigation into Kushner’s foreign-money conflicts.^[30]
April 20, 2026. ProPublica publishes its investigation of the Schwartz pardon.^[44]
April 27, 2026. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams flags the constitutional “adverseness” problem with Trump’s IRS lawsuit: a case requires two opposing parties, and Trump controls both sides.^[34]
May 7, 2026. Reps. Dave Min (D-CA), Raul Ruiz (D-CA), and Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) open a formal investigation into whether pardon recipients secured clemency through intermediaries or payments.^[46]
May 8, 2026. Trump signs his first-quarter 2026 periodic transaction report on OGE Form 278-T.^[6]^[38] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version named the form as 278e.
May 9, 2026. CNN reports Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s reality series funded by Boeing, Shell, Toyota, United Airlines, and Royal Caribbean, all regulated by his department. CREW files an ethics complaint two days later.^[50]
May 11, 2026. Fortune reports that Trump Mobile’s gold T1 phone, advertised with $100 deposits, does not yet exist. The preorder terms were modified in April to state the company “does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase.”^[37]
May 14, 2026. OGE publishes Trump’s Q1 2026 disclosure, showing about 3,640 trades worth between approximately $220 million and $750 million. The Wall Street Journal reports separately that the White House is planning about 250 pardons for Trump’s June 14 birthday or July 4.^[38]^[45]^[111] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said more than 3,700 trades.
May 15, 2026. ABC News reports the proposed terms of an IRS-lawsuit settlement: a $1.7 billion fund drawn from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund to compensate “allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration.”^[33]
May 15, 2026. Eric Trump writes on X that “All of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes.” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) replies with a link to the Q1 filing. The same day, Eric Trump says he will sue Jen Psaki and MS NOW and writes that he has “NEVER been on the board of ALT5.” That night Psaki airs a clip of a Nasdaq announcer welcoming “Alt5 board member Eric Trump” and acknowledges he is “not currently a director on the board.”^[36]^[40]^[111] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version dated these events May 16 and said Psaki displayed Alt5’s press release. She aired a video clip, and the events were on May 15.
May 16, 2026. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough rules against a $1 billion Secret Service security provision Senate Republicans had placed in their immigration-enforcement spending bill; according to Democrats, she found it fell under the Byrd rule. Of that money, $220 million for hardening the White House complex was tied directly to the ballroom. Republicans drop the request on May 20, and Trump signs the bill on June 10 without it.^[56]^[118] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version dated the ruling May 17, described all $1 billion as ballroom funding, and placed it in a DHS appropriations bill.
May 18, 2026. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth headlines a Republican primary rally in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District for the Trump-endorsed challenger to Rep. Thomas Massie, the day before the primary. Hegseth tells the crowd he is there “in my personal capacity as a private citizen,” and the Pentagon spokesman says the appearance was cleared by lawyers. Critics cite the Hatch Act and the military’s tradition of partisan neutrality.^[63] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version dated the rally May 19, the day of the primary.
May 18, 2026. The Justice Department announces the settlement of Trump’s $10 billion IRS lawsuit and the creation of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” at $1.776 billion, administered by a five-member commission appointed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Trump, asked the same day whether Jan 6 violence participants could be paid: “It’ll all be dependent on a committee. I didn’t do this deal. It was told to me yesterday.” 93 House Democrats file an amicus brief asking Judge Williams to block the settlement.^[33]
May 19, 2026 (morning). The DOJ quietly posts a separately signed one-page addendum to its website declaring the IRS “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from examining or prosecuting Trump’s, his family’s, his company’s, and “related companies’” tax returns filed before the agreement. Only Acting AG Todd Blanche signs it.^[33]
May 19, 2026. Treasury Department General Counsel Brian Morrissey, the Treasury’s most senior lawyer (confirmed by the Senate roughly seven months earlier), resigns over the settlement. He served in Trump’s first administration; he declines to comment publicly.^[33]
May 19, 2026. At his Senate Appropriations Committee testimony, Blanche refuses to rule out payouts to violent Jan 6 rioters including a pardonee convicted of five child sex-crime counts. Sen. Chris Van Hollen: “I find that obscene.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune publicly breaks with the administration: “Yeah, not a big fan… I don’t see a purpose for that.” Sen. Bill Cassidy: “We are a nation of laws, you can’t just make up things whole piece.” Per the Guardian and New York Times, IRS officials had recommended fighting Trump’s lawsuit; the agency settled anyway.^[33]
May 19, 2026. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) commutes the sentence of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk convicted of breaching her county’s election equipment in 2020-election conspiracy theory pursuit. Per Votebeat, Colorado officials link the commutation to Trump’s pressure campaign, including the administration withholding unrelated federal funds from Colorado. Trump had previously issued Peters a federal pardon with no legal effect on her state convictions.^[62]
June 4, 2026. Public Citizen reports that 14 of the 27 known corporate donors to Trump’s $400 million ballroom won more than $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts within six months, with Lockheed Martin accounting for about $43.8 billion.^[78]
June 18, 2026. A purchase of up to $500,000 in Boeing stock is recorded in Trump’s disclosures. The same day, the Navy awards Boeing a contract worth up to $880 million for P-8A Poseidon training systems. Snopes confirms both events occurred on that date.^[73]
June 29, 2026. CNBC reports that the specifications in ICE’s $220 million Taser solicitation appear written to foreclose bidders other than Axon, whose stock rose more than 30 percent the week after the notice posted. CNBC finds no evidence Trump knew of the procurement.^[74]
June 30, 2026. OGE releases Trump’s annual disclosure. Bloomberg’s reading finds at least $1.4 billion in 2025 crypto and memecoin income, including more than $594 million from World Liberty Financial token sales, plus nearly $60 million in foreign real-estate licensing and roughly 21,000 stock transactions across the year.^[75]
July 21, 2026. CREW publishes its finding of 29 trades in GEO Group and CoreCivic since the term began, the first on day ten. Bloomberg reports separately that Trump has pardoned nine corporations, erasing roughly $200 million in penalties, the first use of the pardon power on companies in modern American history.^[76]^[79]
August 8, 2026. NPR reports GEO Group and CoreCivic announcing roughly $1.4 billion in combined quarterly revenue.^[77]
August 11-12, 2026. FinCEN issues a final rule permanently ending beneficial-ownership reporting and announces it will delete the records already filed by U.S. persons.^[70]
August 31, 2026. The Supreme Court, 5-4, lets construction of the ballroom continue while the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s lawsuit goes on. The majority finds that the Trust likely lacks standing to sue and says it is not deciding whether the project is legal. Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the court’s three liberal justices, dissents that “That construction is likely unlawful,” because Congress has not authorized it.^[104]
August 22, 2026. An OGE disclosure shows more than 1,000 securities trades during June alone, totaling between $78.1 million and $263.1 million.^[69]

What It Cost, and Why It Matters

The clearest measure of cost is the money owed to victims that pardons have wiped away. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office puts that figure at nearly $2 billion across both of Trump’s terms, including more than $1.3 billion in court-ordered victim restitution and several hundred million in federal fines and forfeitures. The people the courts had ordered repaid will not receive that money.^[47]^[117]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version described the $2 billion as a joint finding of Newsom’s office and House Judiciary Democrats and did not say it covers both of Trump’s terms.

The second measure is the alignment between the president’s personal holdings and his administration’s policy decisions. The documented examples in 2026 alone include:

The one-week gap between a January 6 Nvidia purchase of $500,001 to $1 million and the Commerce Department’s approval of certain Nvidia chip sales to China.^[111] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version tied the approval to a later $1 million to $5 million purchase.
The two-week gap between Trump’s Axon purchase and the ICE Taser order.^[39]
The nine-day gap between the Swiss gifts and the Swiss tariff cut.^[29]

Each individual case can be explained in isolation. The pattern, across the record, is what makes the question worth asking.

A third measure is institutional. OGE Director Walter Shaub, who had publicly criticized the first-term trust arrangement, resigned in July 2017.^[8]^[9] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Shaub resigned over the trust arrangement; the reporting does not tie his resignation to that one issue. Acting SEC Enforcement Director Sanjay Wadhwa departed the agency on January 31, 2025, days after the change in administration, after more than 21 years of service.^[52] The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which prosecutes corruption cases and was created after Watergate, has been reduced from around 36 full-time career lawyers to two, with its caseload dropping from roughly 175-200 open matters to about 20. Five senior officials in the section resigned in 2025 rather than comply with a DOJ order to drop the federal corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.^[53] The independent oversight infrastructure has narrowed since 2017, not widened.

The fourth measure is constitutional, and it is the one the article opened with. Two clauses in the Constitution restrict what the president can take from foreign and domestic governments. The clauses have never been tested at the Supreme Court on the merits. The three first-term cases were dismissed as moot. There is no current case in the pipeline. Whether the conduct of either term satisfies the clauses is, as of this writing, undecided as a matter of American law.

The Founders’ answer for what to do when a president’s conduct is contested and the courts cannot rule was impeachment and elections. Both have been tried. Neither has produced a definitive finding. That is a fact, not an opinion.

Common Claims and What the Evidence Shows

The strongest version of the claim. Eric Trump and the Trump Organization have publicly stated this since 2017. The arrangement is documented and uses the word “trust.” Trustees do exist.

What the records show. Walter Shaub, the OGE director who would have certified a real blind trust, said publicly in 2017 that the arrangement did not meet the federal definition, calling it “not even halfway blind.” He resigned that July.^[8]^[9] The periodic transaction report the president himself signed on May 8, 2026, lists 2,345 purchases and 1,296 sales, mostly of individual stocks, for the first quarter alone. A blind trust by federal definition means the official does not know what is held. The filing lists individual companies by name, not the broad-market index funds Eric Trump described. It does not show who directed the trades.^[3]^[6]^[111]

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said Shaub resigned over the trust arrangement, called the May 8 filing a Form 278e, and said an itemized disclosure is the opposite of a blind trust. The reporting does not tie Shaub’s resignation to that one issue, the filing is a Form 278-T, and no source we rely on makes the last claim.

The White House has since offered a more specific version of the defense, and it deserves a specific answer. Its position is that the holdings sit in “discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.” If that description is accurate, then no individual purchase reflects a decision by anyone, and the timing coincidences in this article would be products of an algorithm tracking an index.^[69]

Two things about that. An index-replicating portfolio is not a blind trust either; it is a different arrangement, one where the holdings are knowable by anyone who knows the index. And the account has not been independently audited, so the description rests on the Trump Organization’s own characterization. The annual disclosure also complicates it: index replication would not explain the roughly 21,000 individual transactions in a single year, up from about 800 the year before, nor the specific dated purchases in Nvidia, Axon, and Boeing.^[73]^[75]

Claim 2: “He’s losing money being president.”

The strongest version of the claim. Trump was a wealthy man before the office. Running for and serving as president interrupts business activity. Trump Media stock has lost roughly 80 percent of its peak value. Some individual properties have lost membership revenue.

What the records show. Forbes’s net-worth tracking shows Trump’s estimated wealth rose from approximately $3.9 billion in late 2024 to roughly $7.3 billion by September 2025, with Forbes attributing about $2 billion of the increase to cryptocurrency ventures launched around the inauguration.^[54] The $TRUMP coin alone generated more than $320 million in trading fees in 2025.^[35] Foreign-government bookings at Trump properties continued through both terms. The Trump Organization’s total revenue is not public, but the available indicators do not support the claim that the office has been a financial loss.

Claim 3: “Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were worse.”

The strongest version of the claim. Hunter Biden was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax crimes. Joe Biden’s family did engage in business arrangements with foreign entities while Joe was vice president and after. The James Comer-led House Oversight investigation produced documented financial transactions.

What the records show. The Comer investigation, after roughly two years, did not produce a referral to the Justice Department alleging Joe Biden personally received foreign payments. Federal investigators under both Trump’s and Biden’s Justice Departments did not produce evidence Joe Biden personally received foreign money. By contrast, foreign-government bookings at Trump properties are documented in House Oversight reports based on GSA records. The Qatar 747-8 gift is documented in administration announcements. The $TRUMP coin trading-fee revenue is documented in blockchain analytics. The comparison is fair to make. Made on the documents, the available evidence is asymmetric.

Claim 4: “All politicians do this.”

The strongest version of the claim. Congressional stock trading is a real and bipartisan scandal. Members of both parties have profited from positions. The STOCK Act of 2012 exists because the pattern was real. Both Pelosi and Tuberville have been the subjects of scrutiny over their families’ trades.

What the records show. The presidency is constitutionally different from a congressional seat. The Founders wrote the emoluments clauses about the president specifically. A House member can be voted out by approximately 700,000 constituents in a single district; the president is the single official with whom foreign governments deal as the United States. Scale matters too: about 3,640 trades in one quarter is not comparable to even the most-cited congressional offender. The “all politicians do this” framing is true in part. It is not a complete answer.

Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said 3,700 trades. The first-quarter filing lists about 3,640.

Claim 5: “The lawsuits were all dismissed. The courts said it was fine.”

The strongest version of the claim. Every major emoluments case against Trump was dismissed by the Supreme Court in January 2021. Nothing was found to violate the Constitution.

What the records show. The cases were dismissed as moot, meaning the lower-court rulings were vacated because Trump was no longer president. They were not dismissed on the merits. The Supreme Court in Trump v. CREW and the related cases explicitly did not address whether the conduct violated the Emoluments Clauses.^[24] Legal scholars across the spectrum, including conservative scholars, have noted this. The constitutional question is open. “The courts dismissed it” is true. “The courts said it was fine” is not the same statement.

Where Things Stand Now

The IRS lawsuit and settlement. Settled May 18-19, 2026: the lawsuit is dropped, the DOJ has created the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” administered by a Blanche-appointed commission, and a separately signed tax-amnesty addendum bars the IRS from auditing Trump’s past returns “forever.” Treasury General Counsel Brian Morrissey resigned over the settlement. Senate Majority Leader Thune said he was “not a big fan.” By May 21, Trump adviser Michael Caputo had filed the first $2.7 million claim, Capitol Police officers had sued to block the fund, the House GOP had blocked Rep. Raskin’s subpoena, and at least 25 Republican senators had broken with the president over it, prompting Majority Leader Thune to recess the Senate rather than vote.^[33]^[64]
The pardons investigation. The Min/Ruiz/Welch letters have gone to more than a dozen pardon recipients. The 250-pardons announcement is expected in June or July 2026.^[45]^[46]
The Q2 financial disclosure covering April through June 2026 is due in summer 2026.
Reform proposals. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Ron Wyden have introduced bills banning or taxing at 100 percent any settlement paid to a sitting president. Neither bill has advanced in the Republican-controlled Congress.^[55]
The ballroom. On May 16, 2026, the Senate parliamentarian ruled against a $1 billion Secret Service security request Republicans had added to their immigration-enforcement spending bill. According to Democrats, she found it fell under the Byrd rule, which keeps items unrelated to the budget out of reconciliation, the process that lets a bill pass with 51 votes instead of 60. Of the $1 billion, $220 million for hardening the White House complex was tied directly to the ballroom. A spokesperson for Majority Leader John Thune wrote, “Redraft. Refine. Resubmit.” On May 20, Senate Republicans dropped the request, and Trump signed the roughly $70 billion bill on June 10 without it.^[56]^[118] Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version dated the ruling May 17, described the full $1 billion as ballroom funding in a DHS appropriations bill, and paraphrased the Thune spokesperson’s words as a quotation.
The $9.7 billion Dell-Pentagon software contract (May 27, 2026). The Department of Defense awarded Dell Technologies a five-year, $9.69 billion contract — the Core Enterprise Technology Agreement — to act as the sole intermediary for Microsoft enterprise software licenses across the U.S. military, the global intelligence community, and the Coast Guard. CNBC framed the timing: “Dell wins a $9.7 billion Pentagon software deal after donating to Trump accounts.” Internal DoD estimates project $422 million in annual administrative savings.^[65]
The $620 million Pentagon loan to Vulcan Elements (May 28, 2026). ProPublica reported that White House Senior Counselor Peter Navarro initiated a Pentagon loan to Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet startup with fewer than 50 employees. Three months earlier, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm 1789 Capital had invested in Vulcan. After the loan, the company’s valuation increased roughly tenfold, from about $200 million to about $2 billion. A Pentagon source told ProPublica: “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done.” Pentagon officials confirmed it was the only major funding request initiated by a top presidential aide.^[66]
The $250 bill with Trump’s face (May 28, 2026). The Washington Post reported, citing four current and former employees, that two Trump political appointees pushed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to mock up a $250 bill featuring Trump. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the same day at the White House: “we’ve created the bill” because “we have to be prepared.” Authorization requires Congress; if it acts, Trump would be the first living person on U.S. currency since 1866.^[67]
More than 1,000 securities trades in a single month (August 22, 2026). A disclosure published by the Office of Government Ethics showed Trump made over 1,000 securities trades during June alone, totaling between $78.1 million and $263.1 million. The filing reports ranges rather than exact figures. Purchases topped $49 million and sales came to at least $28.5 million, with reported buys including Berkshire Hathaway, Visa, Mastercard and Cintas, and a June 22 sale of between $5 million and $25 million of a Vanguard exchange-traded fund. The White House says there is no conflict because the holdings sit in “discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.” That explanation is worth stating precisely rather than waving away: if the trades are executed by an index-replicating model, no individual decision is his. What the format cannot show either way is timing, because monthly ranges cannot be lined up against dated policy decisions.^[69]
The shell-company ownership registry is repealed, and the records already filed are deleted (August 11-12, 2026). The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a final rule permanently ending the requirement that U.S. companies report who actually owns them, effective on publication in the Federal Register. The requirement came from the Corporate Transparency Act, which Congress passed in 2021 as part of a defense spending package; it required most corporations and LLCs to identify anyone owning 25 percent or more, or exercising substantial control, to make anonymous shell companies harder to use. FinCEN also announced it will delete the ownership information U.S. persons had already filed. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department is “eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called it a “gift to cartels, criminals and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system.”^[70]

The deletion is the part that cannot be reversed later. A reporting rule can be reinstated by a future administration. Records that have been destroyed cannot be recovered, and the ownership history they documented goes with them. Banks remain subject to their own customer due-diligence obligations, so the compliance burden shifts to financial institutions rather than disappearing.^[70]
A pardon that cancelled the money owed to victims (August 2026). Marian Morgan and her husband ran a Sarasota investment firm that prosecutors said operated as a Ponzi scheme, misappropriating roughly $10 million and spending it on luxury cars and a waterfront mansion. She was sentenced to 33 years. Trump commuted the sentence to time served, releasing her less than halfway through, and the commutation also ended the court-ordered restitution she owed. Restitution imposed as part of a sentence does not survive a commutation that does not preserve it. One of the people she defrauded, an 80-year-old Colorado pig farmer named John Long, had voted for Trump. Told of her release, he said she would only “suck money out of somebody” else. House Judiciary Committee Democrats have published analyses finding that clemency grants to fraudsters have wiped out victim repayment along with the sentences, a pattern this article documents above.^[71]^[47]
An undisclosed private benefactor for the White House grounds (August 22, 2026). As the Rose Garden was converted into a sculpture garden, the administration described the statues as on loan from “generous private American patriots” without naming them. Reporting identified the lender as Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor already known for undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Three bronzes have been on loan since March 2026. The disclosure question is the relevant one here: a private individual with business interests before the federal government furnished uncatalogued loans for the White House grounds, and the public was told only that they came from patriots. Crow’s private collection, which includes Nazi-era artifacts, drew separate attention; he has said he collects such objects because he hates communism and fascism and wants the evidence preserved.^[72]
Cash from the president to his aides (disclosed September 8, 2026). Financial disclosures released by the White House show Trump personally gave $45,000 in cash to each of three close aides, Natalie Harp, Margo Martin and Chamberlain Harris, and $20,000 to Walt Nauta, listed as holiday gifts. The three women earn $150,000 a year, so each gift equals 30 percent of salary. The legal question is a federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 209, which makes it a crime for an executive-branch employee to receive any “supplementation of salary” from outside the government, and for anyone to pay it. Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, said, “If your employer gives you $50,000 at the end of the year, that’s not a gift, that is salary.” Other experts disagree or are unsure. Sean Cooksey, a former counsel to Vice President Vance, argued the payments “pretty clearly” do not violate the gift or outside-income rules, and Don Fox, a former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said the known facts do not clearly show a violation, while calling a payment this size from a boss to a subordinate something that “just doesn’t happen.” The White House said the gifts “have nothing to do with any of these individuals’ official government duties, and therefore are entirely permissible.” The Washington Post reported there are no other public instances of a president giving White House staff large cash payments.^[81]
A rescue tied to the president’s name (September 13, 2026). Documents sent to Kennedy Center trustees ahead of a September 15 meeting, obtained by The Washington Post and The New York Times, warn that the center, whose board elected Trump chairman, faces “certain fiscal collapse” within weeks and could be unable to make payroll. The draft resolution says Trump has offered to raise the money to keep it running, but only with “appropriate recognition” of his role, and asks trustees to choose among 10 inscriptions for the building crediting him with its renovation. A federal judge had earlier ordered his name removed from the building, and the board has told the court it will not try to add it again before October 8. The center blamed “decades of neglect and deferred maintenance by the previous leadership,” and a spokesperson said adding Trump’s name had “attracted new donors.”^[82] On September 15, a federal judge blocked the board’s plan to put the president’s name on the building and grounds, the board voted to close the main building for two years, and Trump posted that the renovation “will not take place” unless the courts approve “the Board’s approved name.”^[85]
Paid brokers and the pardon power (September 13, 2026). A 60 Minutes investigation recorded lobbyists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl telling a man who was working with CBS that, for $300,000, they predicted they could secure him a pardon by as early as October. CBS found that about 70 percent of Trump’s second-term clemency actions were not routed through the Justice Department, 92 percent when the January 6 cases are included, and sources told CBS that broker fees can reach $3 million. The reporting does not show that any pardon was granted in exchange for a payment. A White House spokesperson said anyone “spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money and the president doesn’t even know who these so-called ‘lobbyists’ are.”^[83]
Donations and decisions at Freedom 250 (September 14, 2026). Four Democratic senators demanded that Freedom 250, the group funding the administration’s 250th anniversary programming, disclose its donors. Their letter said only three listed corporate sponsors disclosed their contributions under federal lobbying disclosure law. United Airlines gave $2.5 million in March; on July 29, Trump announced a $22.5 billion rebuild of Washington Dulles, where United has a 68.5 percent passenger share. The senators acknowledged what that sequence does not prove: without disclosure, “we are left to guess about any connections between a company’s donation and any benefit potentially derived from that gift.”^[84]
A bank charter and a stalled crypto bill (August 14 to September 15, 2026). On August 14, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, led by a Trump appointee, granted World Liberty Financial’s trust company preliminary conditional approval for a national trust bank charter. The charter does not allow taking deposits, the approval can be withdrawn, and World Liberty says it is 38 percent owned by an entity affiliated with Trump and certain family members. On September 15, the Senate fell short, 49 to 50, of the votes needed to take up a crypto market structure bill; Democrats wanted ethics limits that would reach the president’s own crypto holdings, and four Republicans also voted no. Sen. Mark Warner said “we cannot pass landmark legislation governing this industry while allowing the president of the United States to personally profit from it.” The White House’s crypto adviser said the result “increases the risk” that global standards will be set elsewhere.^[86]
Trading volume (September 15, 2026). A Bloomberg analysis of disclosure filings found that Trump or those managing his portfolio made nearly 28,700 trades in the 17 months after his second inauguration, more than the roughly 22,200 reported by all members of Congress combined over the same period. The White House says outside managers run the accounts. The concern is not any single trade but that the president sets policies that move the markets his holdings trade in.^[87]
The Kennedy Center closes (September 16, 2026). A day after a judge blocked the board from putting the president’s name on the building, the main building closed to the public and fencing went up. The White House called it a “temporary safety-related closure” of at least seven days, “distinct from the closure on which the Board recently voted,” and the Justice Department told the court the closure complies with the judge’s order, citing deteriorating exterior concrete panels. Trump told reporters that the administration “should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down.” Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sued as a trustee, asked for an emergency hearing; no court has ruled on whether the closure violates the order.^[88]
The unpaid-tax estimate goes unpublished (September 2026). The IRS’s annual estimate of the “tax gap,” the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid on time, is about a year overdue; the agency’s own page lists the fall 2025 release as “delayed.” The last figure, from October 2024, projected $696 billion unpaid for tax year 2022. Meanwhile the Treasury’s inspector general reported that revenue from IRS audits fell 35 percent in fiscal 2025 as enforcement staff shrank by nearly 10,000.^[89]
A public golf course, and a contract Congress was not told about (September 17, 2026). At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, Rep. Jared Huffman said the National Park Service had signed a contract to begin work on the redevelopment of East Potomac Golf Links, a public municipal course on federal parkland about two miles from the White House, without a public announcement or notice to Congress. The design contract is in the federal award records: $389,355 to an engineering firm, starting September 10. CNN reviewed a Park Service notice putting preliminary construction at $20 million to $49 million, with bidding opening in January 2027. Trump does not own the course, so this is not a case of public money going to his business. What is at issue is public parkland, created by an act of Congress in 1897 “for the recreation and the pleasure of the people,” being rebuilt as a championship course at his request. The Interior Department says cost estimates drawn from a preliminary notice are “premature and irresponsible.”^[90]
Allies bidding for assets the administration’s own sanctions shook loose (September 17, 2026). The Guardian reported that after an executive order Trump signed in May drove a Canadian mining company out of its nickel and cobalt venture with the Cuban state, two rival American bids for the stake went to U.S. authorities. One is from Ray Washburne, vice-chair of Trump’s 2016 Victory Committee and the organizer of this year’s Republican midterm convention. Bloomberg News independently reported the same contest and quoted Washburne on the record. The beneficiaries here are allies and donors rather than Trump himself, and the Cuba pressure campaign is run by Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Trump’s role runs through the order that created the opening. The Guardian also reported, citing unnamed sources, that Trump Organization executives met a grandson of Raúl Castro. That part is single-sourced and not independently confirmed.^[91]
A Russian businessman paid for the president’s son’s wedding celebrations (September 14, 2026). ProPublica reported that Umar Kremlev, a Russian close to Vladimir Putin, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward Donald Trump Jr.’s May wedding celebrations in the Bahamas, including renting a private island and staging a fireworks show, through an entity affiliated with the boxing association he heads. Putin gave Kremlev a state honor the month before the wedding. Neither Trump Jr. nor Kremlev disputes the payments; Trump Jr.’s wife called it “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend,” and his spokesperson called Kremlev “a personal friend.” Trump Jr. holds no government office, so federal ethics rules do not reach him. Jared Kushner, who has helped lead U.S. negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, was among the roughly 50 guests. No reporting shows Kremlev has received anything from the administration, and ProPublica wrote that it is not clear why he helped pay.^[92]
The president answered for it, and gave two answers (September 18, 2026). Asked in the Oval Office whether it was appropriate, Trump said, “it’s totally allowed. And a lot of people have parties and all, but it’s totally allowed. But as I understand it, he paid them back.” He also said he had asked his son when the story broke: “He said, ‘No, I’m paying it back, Dad.’” Both things cannot be simple descriptions of one transaction. The couple’s own statement calls the celebrations “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend” they “remain incredibly grateful” for, and says nothing about repayment. ABC News asked the White House and the Trump Organization for evidence of repayment and got none; the Washington Post reported only that a person close to Trump Jr. confirmed it. Trump Jr. has not said so himself. Republicans criticized it by name: Sen. John Curtis of Utah said, “It’s corruption, I don’t like it,” and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called it “beyond bad.”^[93]
Three Gulf governments were cleared to buy nearly half of Paramount (September 17, 2026). The Federal Communications Commission let Saudi, Emirati and Qatari sovereign wealth funds hold about 49.5 percent of the equity in the company that owns CBS and 28 broadcast stations, above the 25 percent cap that normally applies to foreign ownership. Two details matter for how much weight to put on it. The equity approved is non-voting, and a September agreement with the Justice Department bars the investors from governance rights, information rights or influence over content; the Ellison family keeps the voting stock. But the decision was made by a bureau chief under delegated authority, with no vote of the commission. The agency’s only Democratic commissioner objected to both: “An investment this large in one of America’s biggest media companies doesn’t just buy equity; it secures influence over what gets said and what gets made,” and the ruling went out “as a staff-level decision, with no public vote and no accountability for a call of this magnitude.” Three senators had asked the chairman in June whether the attorney general was chairing the national-security review of the deal and, if he had not recused himself, on what basis.^[94]
A nonprofit tied to the health secretary sold access to officials (September 18, 2026). Bloomberg News reported that a group run by a longtime associate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. circulated a sponsorship menu to companies, with a top tier quoted at $300,000 that included a speaking slot with “meaningful input on the panel composition” and a “private dinner for 30 guests” with Kennedy and the head of Medicare and Medicaid. The listed sponsors include companies regulated by agencies Kennedy runs. The department said the officials “were not involved in the planning or sponsorship activities” and did not know about the arrangements. Nobody has alleged a crime, and the solicitation came from an outside nonprofit rather than from the government. The reason it belongs here is narrower: this is the arrangement Kennedy spent years saying corrupts health agencies.^[95]
The family’s money in the AI industry, while the president sets its rules (September 20, 2026). A Washington Post analysis of Trump’s financial disclosures and corporate announcements found his family business “increasingly intertwined with the boom in artificial intelligence.” His filings list purchases of stock in companies that supply the AI build-out, such as Dell, Micron and GE Vernova, and the Post counts “nearly 30,000” securities transactions since he returned to office, with no blind trust. Donald Trump Jr. is a partner in a venture firm that has invested in AI companies including Elon Musk’s xAI, and the brothers’ data-center venture merged into a company building a large data center in Texas. The day before, Trump had announced an “AI Force” and said existing law is enough to govern the industry. Two limits belong next to those facts. The Post says, “It is not known whether Trump still owns the shares he bought.” And neither the Post nor the Guardian claims the holdings explain the policy; the Guardian wrote, “It’s not clear that financial interests are driving Trump’s policy, but the two have moved in close parallel.” The White House says there are “no conflicts of interest” and that independent managers run the accounts with no input from the family.^[96]
The first contract text from the drug-pricing deals (September 19, 2026). The administration has announced pricing agreements with more than two dozen drugmakers without releasing them. The watchdog group Public Citizen obtained redacted versions of two, with Pfizer and Eli Lilly, through a public-records lawsuit. The documents are posted and some terms can be read directly. The Commerce Department agreed not to impose certain tariffs on Pfizer’s imports “until January 1, 2029.” Pfizer agreed to share with the government a portion, blacked out, of any added revenue from raising its prices abroad. The health department promised to “treat all Confidential Information as exempt from release under FOIA.” And the papers signed at the White House event in September 2025 were an agreement to negotiate; the binding contract came five months later. That signers would get tariff relief was already public, and no one has alleged the contracts are illegal. The White House says the redactions protect “commercially sensitive information,” and Pfizer calls its deal “a win for American patients.” Only two deals have been released, so these terms may not hold for the others.^[97]

The pattern is documented. The question of whether it satisfies the Constitution has not been settled by a court. The decision that remains is the voters’.

Sources

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2. Hamilton, Federalist No. 22 — Library of Congress and Hamilton, Federalist No. 73 on the Domestic Emoluments Clause — Yale Avalon Project

3. 5 U.S.C. § 13104(f) — qualified blind trust requirements (Office of Government Ethics)

4. Washington Post: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all used blind trusts; Trump won’t (November 2016) and Volokh Conspiracy / Reason: President Carter’s peanut business and the “blind” trust (December 2024)

5. Office of Government Ethics — Public Financial Disclosure Form 278e Guide

6. U.S. Office of Government Ethics: Donald J. Trump, OGE Form 278-T Periodic Transaction Report (signed May 8, 2026); the Bloomberg and NBC reporting cited at note 38 covers the filing in detail.

7. Washington Post: Federal ethics chief blasts Trump’s plan to break from businesses, calling it “meaningless” (January 11, 2017)

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11. House Oversight Democrats: Following Trump’s admission, Oversight Democrats demand Trump return foreign-government money

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13. New York Times: Trump Foundation will dissolve, accused of “shocking pattern of illegality” (December 18, 2018)

14. NPR: Judge orders Trump to pay $2 million for misusing his foundation (November 7, 2019) and CNBC: Trump ordered to pay $2 million to settle Trump Foundation suit (November 7, 2019)

15. Wikipedia: Trump University — court cases and class actions

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17. NBC News: Trump received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments as president, House Democrats say (January 4, 2024) and CBS News: Trump’s businesses got at least $7.8 million in foreign payments while he was president

18. Washington Post: Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s hotel after 2016 election (December 5, 2018) and The Hill: Saudi lobbyists bought 500 nights at Trump’s DC hotel after 2016 election

19. Washington Post: T-Mobile executives seeking merger approval booked more than 52 nights at Trump’s hotel (February 6, 2019)

20. Washington Post: Kuwaiti embassy returns to Trump hotel in D.C. for its national celebration (January 26, 2018)

21. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: CREW v. Donald J. Trump — case page

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23. SCOTUSblog: Justices vacate rulings on Trump and emoluments (January 25, 2021)

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27. Brookings Institution: The Emoluments Clause — its text, meaning, and application to Donald J. Trump (Norman Eisen, Richard Painter, Laurence Tribe — December 16, 2016)

28. NPR: Trump administration officially accepts jet from Qatar (May 21, 2025) and The Hill: Ex-White House lawyer Norm Eisen says Qatari jet gift likely violates rules and Senate Democrats: Following The Largest Foreign Bribe To A President In Modern History, Leader Schumer Announces Hold on All Department of Justice’s Political Nominees (May 13, 2025)

29. Bloomberg: Rolex, Gold Gifts to Trump Spur Call for Swiss Investigation and NPR: A Rolex, a gold bar, a trade deal and the ethics of presidential gifts and SWI swissinfo.ch: Criminal report against Swiss gold bar US trade delegation

30. MSNBC: Raskin launches investigation into Jared Kushner — Iran negotiator or private investor? (April 17, 2026) and Bloomberg: Kushner’s Affinity Partners assets surge to $6.2 billion on Mideast backing (March 23, 2026) and Senate Finance Committee: Wyden, Garcia investigate Kushner raising billions while negotiating foreign policy (March 19, 2026)

31. NPR: Ex-IRS contractor sentenced to 5 years in prison for leaking Trump’s tax records (January 30, 2024)

32. NBC News: Trump sues IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion over leaked tax records and HuffPost: ‘Naked Corruption’: Trump ripped after bragging he ‘won a lot of money’ from taxpayers (February 5, 2026)

33. Associated Press: Justice Department announces a $1.7B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit (Hussein, Tucker, Durkin Richer, May 18, 2026) and Guardian: US justice department ‘forever’ bars IRS from auditing Trump’s past tax returns (Sam Levine, May 19, 2026) and Daily Beast: Trump given sweeping tax amnesty in secret deal (Sarah Ewall-Wice, May 19, 2026) and Daily Beast: Top Treasury lawyer Brian Morrissey quits in disgust over the $1.8B settlement (May 19, 2026) and The Independent: Todd Blanche won’t tell Congress if Jan 6 rioters will be paid (May 19, 2026) and The Independent: Senate leader Thune splits with Trump over the weaponization fund (May 19, 2026) and Common Dreams: 93 House Democrats file amicus brief opposing Trump’s IRS settlement ‘slush fund’ (May 18, 2026) and Common Dreams: Trump IRS lawsuit settlement would create $1.7 billion ‘slush fund’ (May 15, 2026) and The Bulwark: You’re Getting Robbed by Trump in Broad Daylight (Andrew Egger, May 15, 2026)

34. Techdirt: Judge just noticed the obvious problem with Trump suing his own IRS for $10 billion (April 27, 2026)

35. Sen. Chris Murphy: Press release on the $TRUMP meme coin and proposed legislation and Decrypt: ‘Most Corrupt Act’: Sen. Chris Murphy moves to ban Trump from shilling meme coin and The Hill: Senate Democrat slams Trump’s ‘grift’ meme coins

36. Newsweek: Jen Psaki Fact Checks Eric Trump Live On Air (May 16, 2026)

37. Fortune: Trump Mobile’s gold Trump phone took $100 deposits a year ago. The T1 still doesn’t exist (May 11, 2026)

38. Bloomberg: Trump Bought Nvidia, Boeing, Microsoft in Flurry of Transactions (May 14, 2026) and NBC News: Trump ethics filing reveals thousands of trades tied to U.S. stocks

39. NOTUS: Trump Bought Corporations’ Stock as His Administration Boosted Their Business

40. HuffPost: ‘Outright Lies’: House Dem Posts Receipts After Eric Trump Denies Family Investments (May 16, 2026)

41. Justice Department, Southern District of New York: Trevor Milton sentenced to four years for securities fraud scheme (December 18, 2023)

42. Justice Department: United States v. Changpeng Zhao — case page and DOJ archive: Binance and CEO Plead Guilty to Federal Charges in $4B Resolution (November 21, 2023)

43. CBS News: Todd and Julie Chrisley sentenced for bank fraud and tax evasion (November 2022) and CNN: Todd and Julie Chrisley sentenced for fraud and tax crimes convictions

44. ProPublica: Trump pardoned a nursing home owner who owed almost $19 million to a grieving family (April 20, 2026) and Washington Post: The case of a felon who paid lobbyists nearly $1 million to seek a Trump pardon (November 2025)

45. The New Republic: Trump’s team plans birthday pardons (May 14, 2026) and Esquire: Trump Wouldn’t Actually Pardon Ghislaine Maxwell … Right? (May 14, 2026)

46. The New Republic: Democrats investigate Trump pardon recipients (May 7, 2026)

47. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom: Trump pardons wipe nearly $2 billion in victim repayment (March 5, 2026) and House Judiciary Democrats: Trump’s corrupt pardon spree cheated crime victims of $1.3 billion

48. ProPublica: Documents reveal web of financial ties between Trump officials and regulated industries and ProPublica: Trump team financial disclosures (interactive database)

49. Philadelphia Inquirer: Kash Patel used an FBI jet to fly to a George Strait and Chris Stapleton concert at the Linc (May 16, 2026) and Campaign Legal Center: CLC calls for inquiry into multiple trips by FBI Director Kash Patel

50. CNN: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy returns to reality TV roots (May 9, 2026) and NPR: Transportation Secretary Duffy filmed a reality show, funded by firms he regulates (May 12, 2026)

51. Common Dreams: Hegseth sought defense stock investment before Iran war (March 31, 2026)

52. SEC press release: Departure of Acting Enforcement Director Sanjay Wadhwa (January 17, 2025)

53. NOTUS: The Justice Department had 36 lawyers fighting corruption full-time. Under Trump, it’s down to two. and NBC News: Firings, pardons and policy changes have gutted DOJ anti-corruption efforts, experts say and NPR: Trump pardons, DOJ moves hurt fight against public corruption (May 13, 2026)

54. Time: 3 ways Trump’s wealth has soared since he returned to office (Forbes net-worth tracking) and Wikipedia: Wealth of Donald Trump (compilation of Forbes annual estimates)

55. NBC News: Democrats seek to bar presidents from collecting settlement money from the government (April 15, 2026)

56. BBC News: Trump’s White House ballroom loses federal funding proposed by Senate Republicans (May 17, 2026)

57. NBC News: Trump fires Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary (March 5, 2026) and ProPublica: Kristi Noem-tied firm secretly got piece of $220 million DHS ad campaign and The Hill: Sen. Kennedy grills Noem on DHS ad campaign

58. The New Republic: Kristi Noem gave huge contract to company accused of people smuggling and Daily Beast: ICE Barbie gives giant border contract to accused people smugglers (SLSCO Ltd.)

59. NBC News: Labor Secretary’s top two aides resign amid investigation into alleged “toxic” workplace (March 3, 2026) and Willamette Week: Husband of Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer banned from office over assault allegations (February 19, 2026)

60. CNBC: Howard Lutnick admits to lunch on Epstein’s island during Senate Appropriations testimony (February 10, 2026) and NBC News: Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein’s island and The Hill: Lutnick admits Epstein island visit

62. Votebeat: Polis commutes Tina Peters’ sentence amid Trump pressure (May 19, 2026)

63. Military Times: Hegseth campaigns for congressional race, breaking with Pentagon neutrality (May 19, 2026)

64. CNN: Police officers who defended US Capitol on January 6 sue to stop Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (May 20, 2026) and Common Dreams: Top Democrats demand accountability; Caputo files first $2.7M claim (May 20, 2026) and The New Republic: Raskin and Democrats move to subpoena officials over the slush fund (May 20, 2026) and The New Republic: Republicans flee work early to avoid voting on the slush fund; Trump rages at GOPer (May 21, 2026)

65. CNBC: Dell wins a $9.7 billion Pentagon software deal after donating to Trump accounts (May 27, 2026) and Breaking Defense: Pentagon awards Dell $9.7 billion contract (May 27, 2026)

66. ProPublica: The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr. (Robert Faturechi, May 28, 2026)

67. Washington Post: Trump $250 bill pushed by Treasury appointees (May 28, 2026) and NPR: Treasury Department prepares $250 bill with Trump’s face on it (May 28, 2026) and Axios: Why $250 bills bearing Trump’s face are a tough legal sell (May 28, 2026)

68. The New York Times: Nearly a Million Investors Lost a Total of $3.8 Billion on Trump Crypto Coin (July 4, 2026) and TechCrunch: Trump memecoin investors lost $3.8 billion, analysis finds (July 5, 2026) and CNBC: 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump’s meme coin. 764,000 have lost money (May 6, 2025) and U.S. Office of Government Ethics: Donald J. Trump, OGE Form 278e, Annual Report for 2025, line 21.6 (released June 30, 2026)

69. Fortune: Trump’s stock disclosure shows more than 1,000 trades in June (August 22, 2026) and CNBC: Trump reshuffled his portfolio in June, selling names like Meta and buying Berkshire Hathaway (August 22, 2026) and Bloomberg: Trump’s Stock Disclosure Shows More Than 1,000 Trades in June (August 22, 2026)

70. U.S. Department of the Treasury: FinCEN Permanently Ends Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirements for Millions of Small Business Owners and Accounting Today: FinCEN ends beneficial ownership reporting and CPA Practice Advisor: FinCEN Permanently Nixes Beneficial Ownership Reporting (August 12, 2026) and PYMNTS: FinCEN Killed the Beneficial Ownership Database but Banks Still Need the Data

71. CBS News: The Ponzi schemer, trade secrets thief and others pardoned by Trump and AlterNet: Trump voters heartbroken as he pardons crook who scammed them of millions and New Republic: Trump Pardons of Fraudsters Cost Victims Nearly $2 Billion

72. Fortune: Trump remakes Rose Garden with loans from secret Supreme Court megadonor Harlan Crow (August 22, 2026) and Washingtonian: The White House Rose Garden Is Turning Into a Sculpture Garden (July 21, 2026)

73. Snopes: Did Trump buy Boeing stock the same day the Navy awarded Boeing a contract? and Yahoo Finance: Trump bought $500,000 Boeing and GovConWire: Boeing lands $880M Navy P-8A training system IDIQ award

74. CNBC: Trump bought Axon stock weeks before ICE sought a $220 million Taser deal (June 29, 2026) and The Independent: Trump stock purchase preceded ICE Taser contract plan

75. Bloomberg: Trump Reports at Least $1.2 Billion in Crypto Earnings for 2025 (June 30, 2026) and The Independent: Trump’s financial disclosures show crypto earnings and New Republic: Trump’s Financial Disclosure Is a Portrait of Profiteering

76. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: Trump has made 29 private prison stock trades since taking office (July 2026)

77. NPR: GEO Group and CoreCivic report record revenue from immigration detention (August 8, 2026)

78. Washington Post: Donors won $50B in contracts after giving to Trump ballroom project, report says (June 4, 2026) and New Republic: Trump’s Ballroom Donors Cashed In

79. Bloomberg: Trump’s Corporate Pardon Power Echoes a 17th Century English King (July 21, 2026) and Sen. Chris Murphy: Murphy Releases New Report on Trump’s Alliance With Corporations That Break the Law and New Republic: Trump’s Corporate Pardons

80. CNBC: Drone stocks rally after Trump orders tariffs on foreign-made components (August 14, 2026) and Manufacturing Dive: Trump imposes 100% tariffs on some drones and components and PBS NewsHour: Company backed by Trump sons looks to sell drone interceptors to Gulf states being attacked by Iran

81. The Washington Post: Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to Natalie Harp, two other close aides (September 8, 2026) and CBS News: Trump gave $45,000 gift to Natalie Harp, 2 other aides, financial disclosures show (September 9, 2026) and Washington Examiner: Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to Natalie Harp and other aides for holidays (September 9, 2026) and Newsweek: Trump could be impeached over $45K Natalie Harp gift, ex-White House lawyer says (September 9, 2026) and Cornell Legal Information Institute: 18 U.S. Code § 209, Salary of Government officials and employees payable only by United States

82. The Washington Post: Kennedy Center could close as early as Tuesday, warns of bankruptcy, documents show (September 13, 2026) and CNN: Reports: Kennedy Center warns of bankruptcy unless Trump’s name returns (September 14, 2026) and Yahoo News (AFP): DC’s Kennedy Center faces bankruptcy, closure

83. CBS News: Pardon brokers offer to “put pressure on the president,” at sky-high costs and CBS News (60 Minutes transcript): Paid brokers tout ties to Trump’s orbit to lobby for presidential pardons and NOTUS: How Boosie Badazz’s pardon push turned into a MAGA mess

84. Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Warren, Schiff, Padilla, Blumenthal demand Freedom 250 disclose donations (September 14, 2026) and Letter from Senators Warren and Schiff to Freedom 250 (PDF) and ABC News: Trump unveils $22.5 billion plan to overhaul Dulles International Airport

85. CNN: Kennedy Center board votes to close for renovations after chaotic call with Trump (September 15, 2026) and Washington Examiner: Trump vows to delay Kennedy Center renovation until courts allow his name on venue (September 15, 2026)

86. CNBC: Trump family-backed crypto firm World Liberty gets conditional bank charter approval (August 14, 2026), Fox Business: Trump-linked World Liberty crypto venture gets preliminary approval from currency comptroller (August 14, 2026), U.S. Senate: Roll Call Vote 234 (September 15, 2026) and AP: Senate blocks cryptocurrency regulation as Democrats push back on Trump investments (September 15, 2026)

87. Bloomberg: Trump Has Made More Trades Than All of Congress Combined (September 15, 2026) and Mediaite: Joe Scarborough stunned as he finds out Trump placed more stock trades than all of Congress combined (September 2026)

88. AP: Fencing goes up around the main Kennedy Center building after Trump-aligned board votes to close it (September 16, 2026) and ABC News: Trump says Kennedy Center could be ‘ripped down’ if he doesn’t get ‘recognition’ (September 16, 2026)

89. Internal Revenue Service: The tax gap, Tax Policy Center: Delayed IRS Tax Gap Estimates Could Obscure Policy And Staffing Impacts (August 5, 2026) and CBS News: IRS audit revenue plunged following workforce reductions, Treasury watchdog finds (September 1, 2026)

90. CNN: Trump’s golf course renovation could cost up to $49 million, documents show (September 17, 2026) and AP via NBC Washington: Park Service quietly awards contracts to work on Trump’s takeover of East Potomac golf course (September 17, 2026)

91. The Guardian: Trump and Rubio allies are vying for control of Cuba’s assets if regime falls (September 17, 2026) and Bloomberg News via Mining.com: Cuba property claims complicate rival bids for Canadian miner Sherritt (September 17, 2026)

92. ProPublica: Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin (September 14, 2026) and CBS News: Donald Trump Jr.’s wife says Russian oligarch hosted post-wedding festivities as a “gift” (September 14, 2026)

93. AP: Trump says his son’s wedding party being bankrolled by a Russian oligarch is ‘totally allowed’ (September 18, 2026), CNN: Trump says his son paid back Russian billionaire (September 18, 2026) and The Hill: GOP senator calls it ‘corruption’ (September 18, 2026)

94. FCC: Declaratory Ruling DA 26-1001 (September 17, 2026), Ars Technica: FCC lets Paramount sell 49.5% equity stake to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar (September 18, 2026) and Senators Booker, Schiff and Warren: letter to Chairman Carr (June 18, 2026)

95. Bloomberg News: RFK Jr.-Linked Group Offered Access to US Officials for Payment (September 18, 2026) and InsideHealthPolicy: MAHA Summit Will Include HHS Leaders, Insurers, Telehealth, AI Companies (September 16, 2026)

96. The Washington Post: Trump and sons invest heavily in AI economy as he resists calls for slowdown (September 20, 2026), The Guardian: As White House shields the AI gold rush, Trump family and other allies strike it rich (September 20, 2026) and Fox News: Trump announces new ‘AI Force,’ vows to protect industry as AI czar announcement nears (September 19, 2026)

97. The Washington Post: Secret contracts reveal undisclosed terms in Trump’s drug-pricing deals (September 19, 2026), HHS-Pfizer Most Favored Nation Drug Pricing Definitive Agreement, redacted copy (signed February 23, 2026), Department of Commerce-Pfizer Letter of Agreement, redacted copy (September 30, 2025) and Newsmax via Yahoo News: Secret Pfizer, Lilly Deals Included Tariff Protections (September 19, 2026)

98. U.S. Office of Government Ethics: Periodic Transaction Report, OGE Form 278-T, Donald J. Trump, signed September 8, 2026, CNBC: Trump discloses more than 1,100 July trades, including up to $25 million each in sales of Microsoft, Amazon (September 22, 2026), CNN: President Trump’s money managers made more than 1,100 trades in July (September 22, 2026) and Reuters via NBC News: Trump bought and sold shares in Musk’s SpaceX in July, financial disclosure shows (September 22, 2026)

100. NPR: RFK Jr.’s ethics disclosure reveals free travel and hefty book advances (September 22, 2026), Mediaite via Yahoo News: RFK Jr. Discloses $250K+ in Gifts From Major Donor, Including Free Trips to Fiji and Greece (September 18, 2026), Raw Story: RFK Jr.’s soaring bodyguard costs covered with money for fighting infant deaths: WSJ (September 23, 2026) and NOTUS via The Washington Sun: HHS Cancels Infant Mortality, Postpartum Grants to Focus on Sperm Counts, ED (September 4, 2026)

101. CBS News: Trump announces plans to host 2026 G20 summit at his Doral resort (September 5, 2025), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: Trump’s unilateral selection of his own club for the G20 puts Trump first, while other cities lose out (April 16, 2026), The Guardian: ‘We hope he’ll accept’: US invites Putin to G20 summit at Trump golf club (September 23, 2026) and Meduza: Kremlin welcomes U.S. invitation for Putin to attend December G20 summit in Miami (September 23, 2026)

102. Washington Post: ‘I am the code’: Trump clashed with ballroom architect over safety issues (September 23, 2026) and The Independent via Yahoo News: Trump’s ballroom architect quit after president dismissed safety concerns with the design (September 23, 2026)

103. Associated Press: US government foots bill for television advertisement featuring Trump’s midterm messaging (September 24, 2026), The Independent: Trump commercial ‘paid for by the US government’ running on Fox News raises eyebrows (September 24, 2026) and The White House: America Will Never Be a Communist Country (video, September 2026)

104. Supreme Court of the United States: National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation, No. 26A203, order and dissent (August 31, 2026) and SCOTUSblog: Supreme Court allows construction on White House ballroom to continue (August 31, 2026)

105. CBS News: New Trump-focused “Love Me” ad campaign paid for by taxpayers hits airwaves (September 24, 2026)

106. AP: Trump administration begins airing 2024 Trump campaign ad in latest taxpayer-funded messaging (September 27, 2026) and NBC News: White House releases new taxpayer-funded ad describing ‘final battle’ (September 28, 2026) and Public Citizen: Taxpayer-Funded Trump Ad Violates the Hatch Act (September 25, 2026) and Axios: White House defends Trump video ad Dems call “government propaganda” (September 25, 2026) and CNN: White House airs another government-funded ad, this time with Trump warning of ‘final battle’ (September 27, 2026)

107. AP: Homeland Security taps $20M in taxpayer funds for pro-Trump ads (September 29, 2026) and NBC News: Pro-Trump TV ads paid for with Customs and Border Protection money, official says (September 29, 2026) and The Hill: GOP senators push back on Trump’s taxpayer-funded ad (September 2026)

108. Axios: Scoop: Trump’s hand-picked, taxpayer-funded ads about to ramp up (September 29, 2026) and CNN: Trump’s ads have cost taxpayers at least $2.5 million, with funding from Customs and Border Protection (September 29, 2026)

109. Washington Post: Republican blocks Senate resolution criticizing Trump’s taxpayer-funded ads (September 29, 2026) and Daily Caller: GOP Senator Blocks Toothless Resolution Denouncing Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Ads (September 30, 2026)

110. Deadline: FCC Chairman Doesn’t See Anything ‘Out Of The Ordinary’ About White House Airing Of Taxpayer-Funded Trump Ads (September 30, 2026) and Al Jazeera: US FCC head says controversial Trump ads do not raise concerns (September 30, 2026) and CREW: Complaint to the DHS Office of Inspector General on financing for pro-Trump television ads (September 30, 2026)

111. Yahoo Finance (Moneywise): Eric Trump says family assets invested in ‘broad market indexes’ — Trump’s own disclosure lists 3,642 individual trades (May 17, 2026) and CBS News: 3,600 stock trades in 3 months: Breaking down Trump’s flurry of investment moves (June 15, 2026)

112. SEC filing, ALT5 Sigma Corp. 8-K Exhibit 99.1: ALT5 Sigma Corporation Announces Closing of $1.5 Billion Registered Direct Offering and Concurrent Private Placement (filed August 18, 2025) and SEC filing, ALT5 Sigma Corp. Form 8-K on board composition (filed August 29, 2025) and TheWrap: Jen Psaki Fact-Checks Eric Trump’s Lawsuit Threat On-Air (May 15, 2026)

113. USA Today: Trump’s gold T1 phone will start shipping this week (May 12, 2026) and Fierce Network: Trump Mobile’s T1 phone arrives, finally (May 20, 2026) and CNET: You Can Now Buy the Trump Phone for $250 More Than Originally Priced (September 10, 2026)

114. OpenSecrets: Some major Trump donors are now reaping billions in ICE contracts (2026)

115. NPR: Trump fires independent inspectors general at several agencies (January 25, 2025) and CBS News: Trump ousts director of Office of Government Ethics (February 10, 2025)

116. U.S. Customs and Border Protection: DHS, CBP continue to strengthen border security with five new Smart Wall contracts in Texas and Arizona (December 18, 2025)

117. CBS News: Trump pardon recipients face congressional investigation over “pay-to-play” questions (Gabe Kaminsky, May 7, 2026)

118. Sen. Jeff Merkley: Golden Ballroom Slush Fund Violates Byrd Rule, According to Senate Parliamentarian (May 16, 2026) and Fox News: Senate GOP tucks $1B for Trump ballroom security into sweeping funding bill (May 5, 2026) and Fox News: Senate parliamentarian rejects $1 billion in reconciliation bill for White House security, Trump ballroom (May 17, 2026) and Politico: Ballroom won’t be funded after Senate GOP drops $1 billion Trump security request (May 20, 2026) and CBS News: Trump signs $70 billion immigration bill, capping lengthy fight over ICE funding (June 10, 2026)

119. The Hill: Trump appoints former Attorney General Pam Bondi to White House science panel (Miranda Nazzaro, May 27, 2026) and BBC: Former US Attorney General Pam Bondi diagnosed with cancer (Grace Eliza Goodwin, May 27, 2026)

120. The Guardian: The billionaire hidden behind the curtain inside Trump’s Pentagon (June 18, 2026)