Conflicts of Interest and Investor Transparency

It's Consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, how President Trump is profiting from cryptocurrency. Many have called me the first crypto president. That's an honor. New financial disclosures reveal Trump and his family have made more than a billion dollars from his crypto businesses since returning to office last year But what does it mean that a president is making this kind of money from an industry his government regulates He addressed that question on Wednesday while talking to reporters. But critics to critics who say you're profiting off the presidency, Mrter Well, you know what I'm profit because the stock market is going s Some of Trum's businesses have benefited from his administration's policies. It seems the any Reluctance. To strike a deal that could seem like he's profiting off the presidency is gone Consider this. For as long as he's been in politics, President Trump has had varied business interests, but it's his second term where he's amassed more than a billion dollars from crypto. How did he do it what has changed since the first term I' Scott Dettrro It's consider this from NPR Historically, when presidents have taken office, they have walled themselves off from their business interests, not President Trump A new financial disclosure form released yesterday shows Trump and his family have raked in more than a billion dollars from cryptocurrency ventures in the past year alone Trump was once a crypto critic, but has embraced the currency in his second term, loosening government scrutiny of the sector among other steps. Bernard Condan wrote about it for the Associated Press and joins us now to explain how these companies made Trump money. Welcome to All thingsings Considered Thank you I want to start with just the scale of all of this. What were the responses that you got from the people you talked to about the fact, just the fact that a sitting president netted a billion dollars from a field that he helped set federal government's regulatory stance up. I have been covering Trump businesses since his first term more than a decade ago and The watchdogs and predictably the Democrats were outraged that he had opened a hotel in Washington welcomed, you know foreign dignitaries and lobbyists This is a whole new level In one year, a little before he took office. He has taken in over one billion dollars outstripping much of anything he owns in his property portfolio Speed is breathtaking. This is all money that came in essentially since he had been reelected president and was about to take office and has been a sitting president And as you're saying now, it outscales the decades of various Trump ventures in revenue in many properties Yes. that Now that's not to say he hasn't done well with his properties. He has taken in tens of millions, this disclosure report shows. from hotels and resorts overseas that didn't exist a little over a year ago. So his property business, at least according to my judgment, is growing fastest It has in the century since since the Trump organization. hisis family business started and yet Joe Triumphs I want to talk more about the details of how this crypto money came in in a moment. but given the fact that you have been covering this all along What is the best way to think about any restrictions, if any that Trump has put on himself when it comes to making personal profits and running his family businesses in the second term In his first term, he signed a so called white paper forbidding his business from striking any new deals abroad. And he also said that he would not even do things uh, that showed apperence of a conflict, much less a conflict itself The ladder Rw he He opened the hotel in Washington among other things, But he didn't strike new deals abroad this time that language, I will not put my name or build anything overseas in countries with which the U. S. government has important business militarily, economically That is gone It seems the any sort of um Reluctance. to strike a deal that could seem like he's profiting off the presidency is gone. And to that end, do we have much of an idea of who is investing in these crypto ventures, whether it's the Trump mean coin or World Liberty Financial? Do we have a sense Who is purchasing this cryptocurrency that makes Trump's money? Because there's been all sorts of questions raised of our people trying to do this to curry favor with the administration on mergers, on regulatory policy and a whole host of other issues A Chinese billionaire named Justin Son bought seventy five million dollars of a crypto asset called governance tokens. issued by world Liberty And they plunge in value reggulators years ago said Watch out ese things are dangerous Meanwhile, the same Chinese billionaire also two hundred million worth of these kind of souvenir meme coins that Trump issued And those too have plunged in value So this one man, Justin's son byite two hundred and seventy five million dollars of Trump crypto stuff. Later, he was He had been sued in the prior administration for duping investors That laawsuit was put on hold And eventually, the lawsuit was settled for ten million dollars. Sun denies there was any link between him pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's D. businesses Oh And and World Liberty says there's absolutely no conflict of interest here What has the White House's response been to all of this since the disclosures have come out The White House says that uh, that only acts in the interest of the public, not for himself His sons run the business. He's not involved at all And they actually come out and attack the media saying, It's a disgrace that you keep bringing up this issue about ethics And if anything has done great things for America Bye helping the crypto industry. Let me ask you this. Th disclosure forms came out and put a number to all of this, but there's still a lot of questions, right when it comes to private business dealings. As somebody who's covered this What are your biggest ongoing questions about just how large the Trump crypto business is I'm interested in finding out more about who bought some of these s and coins. The U.S has strict rules If you give to a presidential campaign You have to disclose who you know who you are and there are limits on how much you can give If you lobby, you have to disclose who you are and what you lobbied onn behalf of In this case, it's the Wild West So aside from one or two actors like the Chinese billionaire Justin Sun a company tied to the United Arab Emirates a government that put five hundred million into Trump's one of Trump's crypto companies Aside from those few examples We know next to nothing. We know how much Trump got But we don't know from whom Bernard Condan, an invvestigative Reporter for the Associated Press, thank you so much. Thank you This episode was produced by Michelle Aslelam and Tyler Bartlum. It was edited by Christopher andntaliada and Tin Beat Amus. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning It's Consider this from NPR. I'm Scott Detro