Donald Trump was sued Thursday by a cryptocurrency company that claims he violated the Constitution by profiting from deals with a United Arab Emirates official while in office.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the lawsuit names the 80-year-old president, his longtime friend and special envoy Steve Witkoff, and World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Trump’s family, accusing them of “corruptly profiting” from more than $2 billion in deals.
“No president in American history has profited from his office so brazenly,” the lawsuit, filed by J. Benjamin Greenberg, a shareholder of Circle Internet Group, reads.
“The President himself has openly admitted that the lack of consequences emboldens him, not only to continue using his high office to enrich himself, but to expand the fortune he is extracting from the trust the American people placed in him.”
Greenberg also accuses Trump of diverting business away from Circle by accepting hundreds of millions of dollars, harming the company’s shareholders in the process.
Four days before Trump’s inauguration, for example, the Trump family sold 49 percent of World Liberty Financial for $500 million to an investment entity backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser, the lawsuit states. Financial disclosures confirmed this purchase after he became president.
“Millions of dollars from that deal, routed from a foreign government, flowed to President Trump after he assumed office,” the suit reads.
Additionally, Greenberg claims Tahnoon orchestrated a scheme to inflate the value of Trump’s crypto holdings, noting that MGX, a UAE government-created investment fund chaired by Tahnoon, announced a $2 billion investment in the crypto exchange Binance just weeks after Trump took office.
Shortly after, the Trump’s World Liberty Financial announced the launch of its own stablecoin, USD1, which MGX used to pay for the Binance deal.
“The President brazenly violated the Constitution in order to enrich himself, his family, and his business, at a direct cost to Circle. He needs to be held accountable,” Greenberg said in a statement provided to the Daily Beast.
Trump later made headlines for pardoning Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who was convicted of money laundering.
In the lawsuit, Greenberg alleges that Trump is violating the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause by profiting from a foreign government without congressional approval.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis pushed back on claims made in the lawsuit, saying that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public.”
“President Trump’s assets are in a trust. There are no conflicts of interest,” she said.
