Mr. Trump, Your Only Real Conflict of Interest Is Yourself

Introduction: a letter to a president who mixed up the White House with his wallet

Mr. President, let's talk numbers first

Mr. Trump, this letter speaks directly to you, because the facts revealed this week deserve to be said plainly: according to your own annual financial disclosure, published Tuesday by the Office of Government Ethics, you brought in at least 2.2 billion dollars in income in 2025, compared with roughly 622 million dollars the year before, prior to your return to the presidency, according to the New York Times. That's nearly a fourfold jump in your personal fortune in a single year of your presidential term.

This dramatic leap is no accident and no simple stock-market stroke of luck: more than 1.4 billion dollars of that income comes directly from your cryptocurrency ventures, according to the 927-page report filed with the Office of Government Ethics and analyzed by several American outlets, including TIME and the Washington Post.

Why this letter, and why now

I'm writing you this open letter, Mr. President, because columnist Robert Reich summed up the situation in a line that will stick: "Trump has only one interest: himself," in an op-ed published by The Guardian on July 2, 2026. That line isn't a gratuitous insult — it's a conclusion drawn directly from your own official documents, the ones you signed yourself and submitted to federal ethics authorities.

This letter isn't meant to deny your strategic usefulness to the West against Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea. It's meant to remind you that the American presidency rests on a simple principle, stated by the Office of Government Ethics itself: "public service is a public trust," which requires putting loyalty to the Constitution ahead of private gain.

The memecoin that earned more than an entire career in real estate

635 million dollars for a token launched three days before your inauguration

Mr. President, your memecoin $TRUMP, launched just days before your January 2025 inauguration, earned you alone more than 635 million dollars in royalties tied to a licensing deal described in your disclosure as "Celebration Coins," according to TIME and the Washington Post. That figure alone exceeds your entire corporate income for all of 2024.

That amount comes from your entities CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, which hold, according to CNN, roughly 80% of the total supply of the $TRUMP token. Every transaction in that token generated fees that landed directly in your pockets, regardless of whether the investors buying it made or lost money.

A 97% collapse that cost your family nothing

Here's the cruel paradox of this story, Mr. President: the $TRUMP token reached a market valuation of nearly 15 billion dollars at its peak, before collapsing 97% to settle around 400 million dollars, according to CNN and CoinMarketCap. While hundreds of thousands of small investors lost their stake, you and your associates kept pocketing commissions on every transaction.

According to data from analytics firm Chainalysis, cited by the Guardian, roughly 764,000 wallets holding small sums lost money on this token, while a handful of 58 early investors made combined profits exceeding 1.1 billion dollars by cashing out before the collapse.

World Liberty Financial, the family business that multiplied its earnings ninefold

A meteoric rise since your return to power

Mr. President, your company World Liberty Financial, co-founded by your sons and by the children of your special envoy Steve Witkoff during the 2024 campaign, earned you more than 550 million dollars in governance token sales in 2025, according to TIME. That figure is nine times the revenue from the same source in 2024, which stood at roughly 57 million dollars.

On top of that comes an additional 260 million dollars from the sale of stakes in the company itself, according to the same report. The White House claims you have since divested from World Liberty Financial, but the company remains tied to several notable cryptocurrency tokens still circulating in the markets.

A secret deal with the United Arab Emirates that raises questions

According to the New York Times, a significant share of your World Liberty Financial earnings comes from the moment the government of the United Arab Emirates secretly bought a stake in the company, precisely as you were resuming your duties at the White House. A structure also guarantees that 75% of every token sale goes to an entity tied to your family, regardless of the price's future movement.

That structure, Mr. President, means in concrete terms that you were guaranteed to make money from the initial sale itself, regardless of what later happened to your investors. Former federal financial regulators, cited by the New York Times, say you have pushed this logic to a level unprecedented in American presidential history.

A 927-page report documenting a sprawling financial empire

Far more than just cryptocurrency

Mr. President, your financial disclosure isn't limited to cryptocurrency: it also documents growing income from your hotels, your golf courses, branded merchandise, and various licensing deals, according to Investinglive and the Boston Globe. This 927-page document paints the picture of a business empire that has thrived directly thanks to policy decisions made by your own administration.

You also received more than 86.5 million dollars from legal settlements with media and social media companies, including ABC, CBS, YouTube, Meta, and X, according to the Guardian. The White House claims most of these funds will go toward financing your future presidential library.

Stock trades that raise timing questions

According to Robert Reich in his Guardian op-ed, your investment accounts executed more than 20,000 transactions last year, several of which appear to have been synchronized with your own public announcements that moved markets. One day before you announced a 90-day suspension of your sweeping tariffs, your accounts made 327 separate stock purchases, each reaching up to 250,000 dollars.

The day after that announcement, the S&P 500 jumped nearly 10%, one of the largest single-day gains in its history, according to the Guardian. You justified these trades, in an interview with CNBC reported by CNN, by saying your adult children legally manage your personal finances during your presidency.

Profits from foreign governments, an alarming signal

The Middle East leads the contributions

Mr. President, your disclosure also reveals that entities in the Middle East contributed roughly 300 million dollars to your businesses last year, according to the Guardian, the largest amount from any single foreign region across your entire financial disclosure. That figure comes on top of the profits from World Liberty Financial via the Emirati investment already mentioned.

These massive contributions from foreign governments raise a simple but fundamental question, Mr. President: why would Middle Eastern states invest so much money in your private businesses, if not in hopes of gaining political or diplomatic favors from your administration in return?

A Qatari plane that symbolizes the problem

On Wednesday, you traveled to North Dakota aboard a plane gifted by Qatar's royal family, an aircraft valued at roughly 400 million dollars, according to the Guardian. That plane is officially set to become your property once your term ends, technically transferred to your future presidential library foundation, but nothing formally prevents its personal use in the meantime.

This gift from a foreign government, as spectacular as it is symbolic, illustrates exactly the kind of situation federal ethics rules are supposed to prevent, Mr. President: an American head of state should never find himself beholden, even symbolically, to a foreign monarchy for a gift of such value.

What the federal ethics framework actually says

A simple principle you seem to have forgotten

Mr. President, the Office of Government Ethics, the very agency that received your financial disclosure, states on its official website that "public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain." That founding principle applies in theory to every executive branch employee, including the president himself.

The agency also provides detailed guidance for analyzing potential conflicts of interest, covering employment interests, investment interests, and financial liabilities for any federal official. These documents exist precisely to govern situations like the one your financial disclosure reveals this year.

A transparent disclosure, but a system that leaves gray areas

It must be acknowledged, Mr. President, that you technically met the legal requirement for annual financial disclosure, a formal transparency exercise the Office of Government Ethics requires of all senior federal officials. The problem isn't the absence of disclosure, but what that disclosure reveals once made public.

The report, notably, doesn't specify whether your cryptocurrency businesses actually generated net profits, limiting itself to reporting gross income, according to the Boston Globe. That gray area lets your administration present impressive numbers without ever confirming the exact scale of personal enrichment that actually results from them.

The White House's defense against the accusations

A systematic, repeated denial

Mr. President, your spokesperson Anna Kelly responded to these revelations by telling CNBC that "neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest." That same spokesperson told POLITICO that all your actions are carried out "in the best interest of the American people."

This systematic denial, repeated with every new revelation since the start of your second term, contrasts sharply with the scale and precision of the figures documented in your own official disclosure. It's becoming increasingly difficult, Mr. President, to reconcile that rhetoric with the accounting reality you signed yourself.

Your own quote catching up with you

You had already, during your first term, downplayed the very notion of a presidential conflict of interest by claiming a president technically cannot have one, according to the quote cited by Robert Reich in the Guardian. You also said Americans "don't care at all" about your undisclosed tax returns or your personal finances.

That position, Mr. President, consistent as it may be with your personal business philosophy, doesn't match the ethical standard expected of a head of state in a constitutional democracy that rests on citizens' trust in their highest institutions.

A brutal contrast with ordinary investors

Massive losses for those who trusted you

Mr. President, according to a Reuters investigation published June 9, 2026, your family collected roughly 2.3 billion dollars from four cryptocurrency projects between November 2024 and April 2026, an amount almost perfectly symmetrical to the 2.25 billion dollars in net losses suffered by more than a million retail investors over the same period.

This near-perfect symmetry between your gains and your supporters' losses is no statistical coincidence, Mr. President: it reflects a market structure in which your family collects licensing fees and transaction revenue without ever putting its own capital at risk, according to the same Reuters investigation.

The data confirming the scale of the imbalance

According to Investinglive, roughly 85% of buyers of the WLFI governance token on the secondary market are now in a losing position, while nearly two-thirds of holders of your personal memecoin are also underwater, according to data from firm Nansen covering more than 1.48 million wallets since January 2025.

These figures, Mr. President, paint the picture of a one-way system: your companies collect guaranteed revenue from the initial token sale, while the overwhelming majority of your supporters who invested their personal savings are now left with substantial, often irreversible losses.

Your administration's troubling role as regulator of the sector

You write the rules of the game you profit from

Mr. President, since taking office, you have appointed regulators favorable to digital assets and pushed for major legislation aimed at removing cryptocurrencies from securities classification, according to Robert Reich in the Guardian. Such a classification would have required far more extensive disclosures from your own companies.

This dual role, both a major commercial player in the cryptocurrency sector and the chief architect of its federal regulation, is precisely the kind of situation federal ethics laws are meant to prevent, Mr. President, according to the very principles set out by the Office of Government Ethics.

A complete inversion of regulatory credibility

While your administration was rolling back the previous administration's stricter regulatory framework, according to the Boston Globe, your own cryptocurrency businesses directly benefited from that loosening to multiply their revenue. This coincidence between policy decisions and personal enrichment goes beyond, Mr. President, a mere appearance of conflict of interest.

A staff report from the House Judiciary Committee, cited by the network WION, has in fact accused your administration of using your presidential office to enrich yourself and your family personally, through arrangements tied to foreign and corporate allies.

What your push to become the world's cryptocurrency capital reveals

A presidential ambition that coincides with your private interests

Mr. President, you announced early last year your desire to make the United States the "world capital of cryptocurrency," according to the Guardian. This publicly stated presidential ambition coincides troublingly with the simultaneous explosion of your own personal income drawn directly from that same sector.

It is legitimate, Mr. President, to support American technological and financial innovation against international competition, particularly from China, in this strategic field. But it becomes hard to distinguish, in your rhetoric, what stems from genuine geopolitical vision from what simply serves your own personal financial interests.

A stablecoin still thriving despite the controversies

The USD1 stablecoin, created by your company World Liberty Financial and launched in March 2025, now has more than 4.5 billion dollars in tokens in circulation, according to the Washington Post. This commercial success, achieved under your own administration and under a regulatory framework you helped shape, illustrates the scale of the competitive advantage your family businesses enjoy.

This kind of commercial success, Mr. President, would not be problematic in itself for an ordinary private entrepreneur. But for a sitting president whose administration directly regulates this sector, it stands as an almost textbook example of exactly what federal ethics rules have sought to prevent for decades.

What this means for American credibility abroad

A worrying message sent to Western allies

Mr. President, at the very moment you're asking your European allies to strengthen their financial and military support for Ukraine against Russia, these revelations about your massive personal enrichment send a deeply dissonant message to those same Western partners, who are watching you with growing attention.

How can you convince European leaders to make additional budget sacrifices for NATO's collective defense, Mr. President, when the head of state urging them to make those efforts is simultaneously quadrupling his own personal fortune in a single year in office?

A dangerous precedent for fragile democracies

This precedent, Mr. President, also risks being exploited by the authoritarian regimes we are jointly fighting on the geopolitical stage, whether Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea. These regimes will not hesitate to point out that even the world's leading democracy tolerates presidential enrichment of this scale without visible institutional consequences.

This dissonance between your rhetoric defending Western democratic values and the reality of your personal financial behavior weakens, Mr. President, the moral standing the United States is nonetheless trying to defend against the authoritarian regimes threatening the current international order.

What Congress should do, but probably won't

Oversight mechanisms that exist on paper

Mr. President, Congress theoretically has oversight mechanisms available to investigate this kind of presidential conflict of interest, including public hearings and formal requests for additional documents from the Office of Government Ethics. These institutional tools exist precisely for situations like the one your current financial disclosure reveals.

The staff report from the House Judiciary Committee, already mentioned, represents a first step in that direction, but it remains far from a formal, bipartisan investigation capable of producing concrete consequences for your personal situation or your family's.

A political paralysis that benefits the status quo

The current political reality, Mr. President, makes such a thorough investigation highly unlikely as long as your party retains control of parliamentary oversight mechanisms. This institutional paralysis, far from accidental, directly benefits the maintenance of the current status quo that allows you to keep accumulating income without any real democratic counterweight.

This situation, Mr. President, illustrates a structural weakness in the American system of presidential ethics oversight: the mechanisms exist on paper, but activating them depends entirely on the political will of the party in power, which obviously has no interest in investigating its own head of state.

Why this letter does not question your geopolitical usefulness

Distinguishing the strategist president from the entrepreneur president

Mr. President, this letter is not trying to minimize your role in maintaining Western pressure against Vladimir Putin's Russia, nor your support, imperfect as it may be, for the Ukrainian cause against Russian aggression. These geopolitical matters remain distinct, though not entirely disconnected, from the question of your personal enrichment through cryptocurrency.

It is possible, Mr. President, to simultaneously acknowledge your strategic usefulness against the authoritarian regimes threatening the Western order, while firmly denouncing personal financial practices that weaken the moral credibility of the American presidency you currently hold.

The necessary evil must not become an evil without limits

This distinction, Mr. President, is precisely the one that must guide any honest analysis of your presidency: on a strictly geopolitical level, you remain a figure whose firmness toward the West's adversaries retains real strategic value. But that strategic usefulness in no way excuses your domestic financial excesses, which deserve to be denounced with the same rigor.

The concept of a "necessary evil" applied to your presidency, Mr. President, never amounts to a blanket pass on all of your conduct. It means a clear-eyed acknowledgment of your occasional strategic strengths, combined with constant vigilance against your most flagrant personal excesses.

What your own supporters are starting to say out loud

Anger rising in pro-Trump crypto forums

Mr. President, it should be noted that the anger sparked by these revelations doesn't come solely from your usual political opponents. According to several market analyses relayed by Investinglive and MEXC News, a growing share of your own supporters, those who invested in the $TRUMP token or in WLFI believing they were backing your economic vision, are now expressing growing frustration at the scale of their personal losses.

This anger, still largely contained within specialized forums and social networks dedicated to cryptocurrency, could eventually turn into a concrete political problem if the gap between your personal profits and their losses keeps widening in the months ahead, Mr. President.

A risk of fracture within your own electoral base

This political risk, Mr. President, deserves to be taken seriously by your administration: an electoral base that feels financially cheated by the head of state it fervently supported represents a far greater long-term political danger than criticism from your traditional opponents, who would criticize you regardless of your actions.

The Wall Street Journal has documented individual cases of disappointed investors who lost considerable sums in your cryptocurrency projects, very concretely and humanly illustrating the widening gap between your rhetoric defending American workers and the financial reality experienced by some of your own voters.

Conclusion: a letter that asks for just one thing, consistency

What this letter actually asks of you, Mr. President

Mr. President, this open letter doesn't ask you to give up your personal fortune, nor to apologize meekly for your past business successes. It simply asks for consistency: if you demand financial sacrifices from your Western allies for collective defense, hold yourself to a minimum ethical standard worthy of the office you occupy.

The figures in your own financial disclosure, validated by the Office of Government Ethics and analyzed by dozens of independent American and international outlets, don't lie: your personal fortune exploded while hundreds of thousands of your own supporters lost money in the very financial vehicles you helped popularize.

A call for total transparency, not resignation

This letter, Mr. President, ends with a simple demand: require your own administration to disclose total transparency on net profits, not just gross income, from your cryptocurrency businesses. Agree to have an independent bipartisan commission examine these figures without leniency, rather than settling for your spokespeople's repeated denials.

The American people, and by extension the Western allies counting on your leadership against the threats posed by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, deserve a president whose financial integrity doesn't raise doubts as well-documented and as massive as those revealed by your disclosure this year, Mr. President.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am neither a forensic accountant nor a specialist in American constitutional law; I rely on official documents published by the Office of Government Ethics as well as verified reporting from established media outlets to analyze this situation. My acknowledged bias favors a pro-Western, pro-Ukraine line, while recognizing that Trump's strategic support for that cause does not exempt him from rigorous scrutiny of his domestic financial practices.

What I don't know

I cannot state with certainty whether Trump's real net profits match the gross income disclosed in his statement, nor establish a formal legal causal link between his regulatory decisions and his personal gains, as these matters lie beyond the scope of my expertise as a generalist columnist and require a thorough judicial or parliamentary investigation that I am not in a position to conduct myself.

Sources

Primary sources

U.S. Office of Government Ethics — official website, financial disclosure rules and ethical principles of the executive branch, 2026

The Guardian — Robert Reich, Conflicts of interest? Trump only has one interest: himself, July 2, 2026

Secondary sources

The New York Times — Trump pulled in at least $2 billion after returning to the White House, June 30, 2026

TIME — Trump Reports Over $1 Billion in Income From Crypto Ventures, July 1, 2026

Reuters — Parsing the Trumps' crypto profits, investors' losses, June 9, 2026

The Washington Post — Trump made $1.4 billion from crypto last year, July 2, 2026

CNN — How Trump made more than $1 billion on crypto when most of his coin's investors lost money, July 2, 2026