Donald Trump risks undercutting his presidency with a Hunter Biden-style influence-peddling scandal unless he clamps down on questionable crypto deals that his family has inked with investors in the Middle East and China, experts told The Post.
Trump is catching flak from both sides of the aisle as foreign money pours into two family-linked crypto projects – the $TRUMP meme coin and World Liberty Financial. In both examples, critics allege that foreign entities are trying to buy influence with the White House.
“There’s certainly a parallel to Hunter Biden, who traded off his father’s name while he was vice president,” said former US Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) who was chairman of the House Ethics committee.
The latest apparent conflict of interest surfaced last Tuesday, when an unknown Chinese e-commerce firm GD Culture Group with zero revenue, eight employees and a business reliant on TikTok said it would buy up to $300 million of $TRUMP – even as Trump weighs plans to allow TikTok to stay online in the US despite Congress’s ban.
Such deals threaten to derail Trump’s efforts to legitimize the crypto sector, according to crypto industry experts and ethics officials. They also provide fodder to Democratic critics.
“You have to start with the president telling his family what they can and cannot do and what lines cannot be crossed. It has to come from him,” Dent said. “If the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would be screaming bloody murder over this stuff.”
Hunter Biden faced years of Congressional probes over claims of influence-peddling for allegedly selling access to then-Vice President Joe Biden while sitting on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
World Liberty Financial is majority-owned by a Trump business entity and counts Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Zach Witkoff – the son of top White House adviser Steve Witkoff – as key executives.
“President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement. “There are no conflicts of interest.”
Representatives for World Liberty Financial and the Trump Organization did not return requests for comment.
Mark Hays, associate director for cryptocurrency and financial technology at Americans for Financial Reform, pointed to the involvement of Chinese investor Justin Sun, a billionaire and founder of Tron, who initially poured $30 million into World Liberty Financial in 2025 shortly after Trump took office.Â
His investment now stands at $75 million. He is now one of the largest investors in World Liberty Financial and a “potential security risk,” according to Hays.
“I think that the president’s involvement in crypto ventures creates a very easy opportunity for the president to engage in pay to play politics using crypto and vice versa for foreign actors,” said Hays. “There are many ways to move money quickly and opaquely that will not show up on a balance sheet.”
The SEC filed a civil securities fraud case against Sun in 2023. However, lawyers for the agency and Sun said in February that they were looking to settle the case.
“There is a lot of opportunity for chicanery here,” Hays added.
The $TRUMP meme coin is issued by Trump family entities, which control 80% of the supply and profit whenever it is traded. A related $MELANIA coin, named after the First Lady, was also released.
The Trump Organization has said that the president handed daily management of its interests to his kids upon entering the White House and is not directly involved in decision-making.
Nonetheless, the dynamic is “threatening to make crypto radioactive on Capitol Hill again and that’s a major problem for an industry that supported him overwhelmingly in the last election,” said Eric Soufer, head of the advanced tech practice at advisory firm Tusk Strategies.
“You need sensible rules to build investor confidence and purge the comic book villains from the industry. But right now, Trump’s people are making him look like one.”
An Abu Dhabi-based investment firm said earlier this month it would use USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, to make a $2 billion investment in the China-linked crypto exchange Binance – whose founder Changpeng Zhao was jailed last year in the US on federal money laundering charges.
World Liberty is positioned for ongoing profits on that deal because stablecoin issuers typically invest the money in US Treasury bonds and pocket the interest. Â
Critics were similarly miffed last month after Trump said he’d host an exclusive May 22 dinner for the top holders of his $TRUMP coin at his golf club in Virginia. A recent Bloomberg analysis found that 19 of the top 25 bought the coin on international exchanges that exclude US-based customers – meaning they are likely foreign.
Trump garnered unprecedented support from crypto and tech executives ahead of his election with promises to ease federal regulations on the fledgling industry.
While his early efforts to support the industry, such as tapping David Sacks as the White House’s first-ever crypto czar, have drawn widespread praise, some fear that Trump’s personal investments will cast a shadow over efforts to regulate it.
Mike Chan, who invests in early-stage crypto startups at his firm Deep Ventures, described the Trump family’s crypto dealings as a “big conflict of interest.”
“He’s blurring those lines, which makes anything that’s happening on the regulatory front less legitimate and makes our industry look less legitimate because he’s lining his pockets,” Chan said.
One recent analysis by Fortune found that crypto holdings now account for nearly 40% of Trump’s overall net worth, or the equivalent of $2.9 billion.
Last week, the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill that would establish federal rules for stablecoins, was shot down in the Senate, with several Democrats citing $TRUMP and World Liberty Financial as the reason they couldn’t support the legislation.
As it became clear that the bill didn’t have the votes to pass, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), known on the Hill as the “Crypto Queen,” told the New York Times that the Trump family’s interests had created “challenging” optics.
When asked by The Post if the senator was concerned about potential conflicts of interest, a spokesman for Lummis declined further comment.
“President Trump promised to be the most pro-digital assets president in history and he is delivering,” Lummis said in a statement to The Post.
“This is such an important issue and Congress must deliver,” Lummis added.
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