The Trumps Get Richer

Now that President Trump is back in office, his family is profiting from his brand: At least $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just the last month. The ventures include real estate, a cryptocurrency and a private club slated to open in Washington with a $500,000 membership fee. Now, Qatar may give him a new presidential airplane.

The ethical mess is obvious. Trump is both the commander in chief and a business partner of foreign governments in Serbia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The White House says his sons run his companies, so there’s no conflict. Legally, that’s true.

But Trump is still getting rich (or richer) from all of it. And that leaves incentives for the president to pay back his business partners with policy decisions designed to help them, which is how the law defines corruption. Today’s newsletter is a tour of the recent deals.

Crypto

• $TRUMP is the family’s cryptocurrency, owned by the president and run by Donald Trump Jr. It has no inherent value beside what people will pay for it; the family describes it as a collectible — like a baseball card. But every time someone purchases a coin (currently worth about $13), the family gets a share. Recently, the president offered rewards. The top 220 buyers are invited to dinner with him next week at his Virginia golf club. The top 25 buyers also get a White House tour. The winners of the contest spent at least $174 million to buy $TRUMP coins.

• Through an investment firm, the United Arab Emirates put $2 billion into the Trump family’s new cryptocurrency outfit, World Liberty Financial. The company, whose leaders include Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., will make tens of millions of dollars per year from the investment.

Real estate

• Qatar chipped in to help finance a Trump-branded beachside golf and luxury villa project in the country worth $5.5 billion. (We don’t know how much it contributed.) The family will earn millions in licensing and management fees.

• A real estate firm in Saudi Arabia (with close ties to the country’s government) invested $1 billion in the Trump International Hotel and Tower project in Dubai. The same company is planning to build other new Trump hotels, golf courses and luxury towers in Saudi Arabia and Oman. These, too, are branding deals that will pay the Trumps millions of dollars for their name.

• During the Balkan wars, NATO bombed Yugoslavia’s Defense Ministry in Belgrade. Now Serbia’s president is leasing the land to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who will erect a Trump hotel on the site. Kushner’s private equity company — funded mostly by Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds — will help cover the $1 billion project.

Other deals

• Plane: Qatar is planning to give a $400 million Boeing 747 aircraft to the president so he can use it as a temporary Air Force One. His presidential library will own the plane after his presidency, Trump says.

• Members’ club: Donald Trump Jr. and other investors say they will open the Executive Branch, a private social club, in Georgetown this summer. Its members will include lobbyists, tech industry bigwigs and a sprinkling of White House officials, such as David Sacks, who is Trump’s crypto czar. The cost to join: $500,000.

• Golf: LIV Golf, the new Saudi-backed golf league, hosted a professional tournament at Trump National Doral in Florida last month. The president arrived on a military helicopter to kick it off. The league is run by the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It paid the Trump family an undisclosed fee to host the LIV tournament. The event also drove thousands of fans to the hotel resort, selling out its rooms and restaurants.

• Hotels: During Trump’s first term, dignitaries stayed at Trump properties and Republicans put on events there. These payments collectively were in the tens of millions of dollars. Payments like these have resumed. Groups like the Republican National Committee have put on events at the Doral resort and the Mar-a-Lago club, for instance.

For more: Trump is pushing ethics guardrails. Republicans on Capitol Hill seem unlikely to challenge him.

Below, Michael Shear, a Times correspondent, explores Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Trump is visiting the Gulf and meeting with leaders across the region. It has so far been a friendly trip: Trump has shown a chumminess, even infatuation, with his counterparts in the Saudi royal family. Here are three reasons Trump seems to love Saudi Arabia:

Gold, everywhere: I was in the group of reporters who traveled with Trump on his first trip to Saudi Arabia as president in 2017. The opulence was overwhelming. But it was clear that Trump, who has a famous preference for gilded architecture, loved it.