As Americans Suffer From Higher Costs, Trump Continues To Enrich Himself And His Family, Turning Public Office Into Private Profit

Time-Trump Media to Sell Traders 'the Fastest' Access to Truth Social Posts

NYT- Trump Pulled In At Least $2 Billion After Returning To The White House

NYT- Trump Cut A Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand To Profit

CNN-Trump Promoted Companies On Truth Social Days After Buying Their Stocks

Over the past few months, story after story has come out detailing how Trump continues to profit off the presidency as Americans' costs continue to skyrocket. From launching "Truth API" to give faster access to his social media posts to traders for a profit, to granting contracts to firms that benefit his family members, and selling pardons to the highest bidders, Trump's grift continues daily. Senate Democrats have launched a new anti-corruption initiative that will continue to highlight and expose how his corruption enriches his family to the tune of billions of dollars at the expense of American families.

Yesterday, Leader Schumer introduced the Anti-Corruption Bureau Creation Act, landmark legislation to create the nation's first independent federal bureau dedicated to rooting out corruption across the executive branch and stopping presidents from turning public power into private profit. The new Anti-Corruption Bureau would have sweeping investigative, subpoena, oversight and enforcement powers to follow the money, expose corruption and hold even the most powerful public officials accountable. Its leadership, structure and financing would be insulated from presidential interference, ensuring that no administration could defund it, disable it or fire its leaders and leave it powerless. The legislation would also empower Americans and state attorneys general to sue to recover money obtained through presidential corruption.

Headlines below from just the past two months exemplify the need for this legislation:

Politico- Trump Overrode His Own Agencies To Deny Four Democratic Disaster Requests. "President Donald Trump overruled his own agencies when he denied disaster aid for four Democratic-led states this month. Emails between state and federal officials obtained by POLITICO along with more than 150 pages of documents submitted to FEMA by three states - New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island - provide new details about Trump's low rate of approving disaster aid for his political adversaries. He also denied a request by New York after administration officials verified that it had met federal standards for approval, according to state officials." [Politico, 7/29/26]

Financial Times-Fifa Plans $20bn Commercial Vehicle To Lure External Investors. "Fifa is planning to sell a roughly 20 per cent stake in a new commercial entity valued at about $20bn, as the governing body's president Gianni Infantino seeks to capitalize further on this summer's lucrative and controversial World Cup. The Switzerland-based non-profit said on Tuesday that it was working with bankers at JPMorgan to raise up to $4.2bn this year by bringing in external investors to the new commercial vehicle, named Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE). Joshua Kushner, the tech investor whose elder brother Jared Kushner is married to President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, is in talks to lead the deal through his Thrive Eternal fund." [Financial Times, 7/28/26]

NY Post- How Trump's Presidential Pardons Became Booming Business For Law Firms: 'You Have To Pay $2 Million, $3 Million'. "When former California congressional candidate Omar Navarro started asking his Republican allies about a presidential pardon, he got hit with sticker shock. 'I talked to people that were in the Republican Party, and people that supported me in the past, and they made insinuations that you have to pay this law firm $2 million, $3 million and they'll help you get a pardon,' Navarro told The Post from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles." … "Nursing home owner Joseph Schwartz was pardoned by Trump in November 2025 after admitting to withholding $39 million in payroll taxes from Uncle Sam. He paid three different firms a total of $1.1 million to advocate on his behalf, according to disclosure reports reviewed by The Post." [NY Post, 7/25/26]

NYT-Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants To States That Did Not Vote For Him. "When the Trump administration canceled more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era federal grants for clean energy projects in October, it framed the move as an urgent corrective to protect taxpayer funds from waste. But it wasn't true. In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding 'based solely' on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party's presidential nominee, in the 2024 election." [NYT, 7/24/26]

CNN-Trump Jr.'s Investment Firm Has Soared Since His Father's Election. So Has Federal Funding To Companies It Backs. "A short drive from President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, in a small office a block from the beach, sits the headquarters of 1789 Capital, a firm founded just a few years ago with plans to invest in businesses aligned with conservative values. Since Donald Trump Jr. joined as a partner shortly after his father's reelection, 1789 Capital has rapidly grown to manage billions of dollars in assets with a strategy that closely reflects the president's policies. Companies backed by 1789 Capital have also significantly increased their federal funding under the Trump administration, a CNN analysis of contracting data found. Ten defense, space and software companies that Trump Jr.'s firm is invested in have been awarded over $1.6 billion from federal contracts and grants in the first 500 days of Trump's second term - 79% more than the amount they were awarded during the same time period at the end of President Joe Biden's term." [CNN, 7/20/26]

Time-Trump Media to Sell Traders 'the Fastest' Access to Truth Social Posts. "From announcements of U.S. military action to threats of tariffs on other nations, Donald Trump's Truth Social has been a repository of market-moving statements-mostly from him-since the social media site's launch in 2022. Now the U.S. President is courting more controversy by selling access to some of those posts in "milliseconds." Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the microblogging platform, announced Thursday plans to launch "Truth API," a data feed that provides what it calls the "fastest" real-time access to posts "from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts." [Time, 7/17/26]

AP- Trump Firm Plans To Sell Priority Access To Truth Social Posts, Possibly His Own. "President Donald Trump's media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own affecting national security and financial markets. The move announced Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news from top Truth Social contributors in milliseconds so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates. Called Truth PSI, the new service comes amid a flurry of other deals by Trump and his family company that critics say are exploiting the presidency for profit." [AP, 7/16/26]

CNN-Trump Promoted Companies On Truth Social Days After Buying Their Stocks. "President Donald Trump hopped on Truth Social last year to share some "very big and exciting news." Nvidia, the computer chip manufacturing behemoth, had just announced plans to build AI supercomputers in the United States. "All necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered" to Nvidia and similar companies, Trump vowed in the April 15, 2025 post to his more than nine million followers. What the president didn't disclose at the time was that days earlier, he had purchased between $200,000 and $500,000 of the company's stock. A CNN investigation found that Trump has promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms - at times announcing government actions that could benefit the companies he just invested in." [CNN, 7/16/26]

WaPo- Trump's Sons Invest Heavily In Defense Tech As Father's Administration Pours Money In. "President Donald Trump's sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have amassed a portfolio of defense technology start-ups that are benefiting from new Pentagon priorities and spending, further entangling the United States' interests and the Trump family's financial fortunes in an area with immense stakes for national security. As the current administration has made modernizing the tools of warfighting a centerpiece of its national security agenda, funds linked to the Trump brothers have invested in more than a dozen defense tech companies and other firms seeking businesses from the Pentagon and federal agencies, a Washington Post analysis finds, based on public federal contracting databases and news releases as well as data from PitchBook, a venture capital research database. Most of the investments have taken place since Trump was elected president for a second time. The companies have collectively generated at least $3.2 billion in direct government business since the sons invested and an additional $3.1 billion in future contract options." [WaPo, 7/13/26]

Reuters-U.S. Judge Finds Trump Misused Court In IRS Case, Refers Lawyers For Discipline. "A U.S. judge on Monday found that President Donald Trump improperly used a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS to extract personal benefits from the government he oversees, preventing the terms of a settlement agreement from taking legal effect. Miami-based U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams excoriated Trump's personal lawyers and attorneys in his administration, concluding their interests were not opposed to each other as is legally required for civil lawsuits. Williams referred a Trump lawyer in the case, Alejandro Brito, and senior Justice Department officials who signed off on the settlement to state bar authorities to determine if their actions violated legal ethics rules." [Reuters, 7/13/26]

TechBuzz- Trump Admin Grants UAE Export Perks Amid $2B Crypto Deal. "The Trump administration just handed the United Arab Emirates a significant export advantage that's raising eyebrows across Washington. The Commerce Department announced it will give favorable treatment to exports involving MGX, a UAE investment firm that recently deployed a Trump family-linked stablecoin for a $2 billion Binance transaction." … "Starting immediately, the agency will prioritize and favorably review export applications involving MGX, the Abu Dhabi-based investment vehicle that's been making aggressive moves in the digital assets space." [Tech Buzz, 7/10/26]

CNBC-Trump Plugs Dell At First-Ever White House Opening Bell, Sending Shares Soaring. "President Donald Trump on Monday promoted Dell's computers from the White House after ringing the opening bell of the stock market in the Oval Office in a first-of-its-kind joint ceremony with the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Dell stock soared more than 7% after the president's remarks. 'Go out and buy a Dell computer,' Trump said. It wasn't the first time he's made that pitch. He did so in May when lauding Dell CEO Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, who have pledged to donate more than $6 billion to the 'Trump Accounts,' program, which launched July 4." [CNBC, 7/6/26]

NYT-Nearly A Million Investors Lost A Total Of $3.8 Billion On Trump Crypto Coin. "The analytics firm's assessment was calculated this week after Mr. Trump signed an annual financial disclosure showing that he walked away with a $636 million payout on the same crypto bet, part of a haul of at least $2.2 billion from all of his business ventures in 2025. The odds were always in his favor. Mr. Trump profited whether the price of his memecoin went up or down. He collected returns whenever anyone traded the tokens, as he repeatedly pushed his followers to do, using his Truth Social account to promote the coin." [NYT, 7/4/26]

WSJ-Crypto Bets and Real Estate Deals: Inside Trump's $2 Billion Year. "President Trump's personal income surged to more than $2.2 billion in the first year of his second term. Unlike other presidents who generally have divested holdings or established blind trusts, Trump put many of his assets into a revocable trust overseen by Donald Trump Jr., who also co-heads the real estate and hospitality-focused Trump Organization with one of the president's other sons, Eric Trump. Though Trump is best known for his real-estate empire, income from those businesses was dwarfed by his crypto-related ventures, which brought him more than $1 billion last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of his 900-page federal disclosure form." [WSJ, 7/1/26]

NYT- Trump Pulled In At Least $2 Billion After Returning To The White House. "President Trump reaped a stunning windfall in his first year back in the White House, including about $1.4 billion from his family's cryptocurrency businesses, a new filing shows. All told, the president pulled in at least $2.2 billion, a figure that includes other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets. That compares to a minimum of $622 million his enterprises pulled in for all of 2024, before he returned to the presidency. One of his biggest hauls in 2025 came when an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates bought nearly half of the Trump family's main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, a transaction that blurred the line between foreign policy and private enterprise." [NYT, 6/30/26]

NYT- Trump Cut A Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand To Profit. "When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan's president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington. During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world's largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods." … "It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity. Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history." [NYT, 6/28/26]

CBS News- A Trump-Linked Firm Is Lobbying For Pardons. Its First Client Already Paid $500,000. "When President Trump returned to power, a group of his former campaign and administration officials started a federal lobbying practice. Mo Strategies, which has registered an array of corporate clients, is now expanding into the newly lucrative world of pardons. Business is booming. The Trump-linked firm has signed on to lobby for the law firm Blessinger Legal in Northern Virginia for "immigration and pardon-related discussions," federal lobbying disclosures in late May show. The engagement has already yielded the firm $500,000 in income, and more work is expected, Marty Obst, president of Mo Strategies, said in an interview." [CBS News, 6/24/26]

High Country News-Billions In Border Wall Contracts Are Going To A Montana Firm Run By A Trump Donor. "Barnard Construction Company, Inc., an engineering contractor based in Bozeman, Montana, recently celebrated its 50th year in business. On its website, the company lays out a colorful history that starts in 1975, when 25-year-old Tim Barnard moved to Montana with "$1,000, two shovels, a pick, and all of his possessions in the cab of his pickup." A timeline offers highlights of the half-century since, from building a natural gas pipeline in Utah and hydropower in Alaska to winning a federal government contract to bring down dams in Washington and increase spawning habitat for native salmon species. What the website doesn't show are the company's largest federal contracts: the billions of taxpayer dollars Barnard has been awarded to build President Donald Trump's border wall. Also unmentioned are its founder's financial ties to the president." [High Country News, 6/9/26]

WaPo-Ballroom Donors Won $50B In Contracts After Giving To Trump Project, Watchdog Group Finds. "More than half of the publicly identified donors to President Donald Trump's White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months, according to a report released Thursday by a government watchdog group. Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to the $400 million project, which would replace the East Wing that Trump demolished in October, have seen their government business grow in that window, according to the report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit. Most of those same companies are also facing federal enforcement actions over alleged wrongdoing or have had such actions suspended by the Trump administration since the start of Trump's second term, the nonprofit found." [WaPo, 6/4/26]

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