Donald Trump’s use of his second presidency to grow his personal fortune has alarmed legal and ethics experts and congressional Democrats as he has reaped an “unprecedented” $2.2bn in 2025 revenues by amassing big cryptocurrency holdings, benefiting from wealthy foreign interests, expanding his Truth Social business and more, while federal oversight of his actions has waned. Trump last year raked in at least $1.4bn from his crypto ventures according to financial disclosure forms he filed in June. Simultaneously, about one million investors in a Trump crypto scheme suffered almost $3.8bn in losses as their volatile crypto holdings tanked in value.
Monetizing his presidency further this summer, Trump’s Truth Social media business is pushing a new scheme that offers wealthy buyers special early access to his posts for a fee of $100,000 a month, which top Democrats and public interest groups say pose serious conflict of interest and corruption issues. Mark Warner, the Democratic senator of Virginia, in July wrote to six major Wall Street financial trade groups urging them to reject a new Truth Social product, dubbed Truth API, that would enrich Trump by giving big investors early looks at Trump’s postings. Warner’s letter urged that they “not legitimize an arrangement that sells privileged access to market-moving presidential communications, especially for the president’s personal financial benefit”.
On another monetization front, critics raised red flags about how Trump tapped his justice department to forge a potentially lucrative and sketchy deal to settle a $10bn lawsuit by Trump against the IRS about a leak of his tax returns that gives him and his family immunity from IRS audits of prior tax returns and could save him $100m. Likewise some analysts are troubled by how Trump has circumvented the constitution’s prohibition on foreign emoluments by accepting a $400m plane as a gift from Qatar, and how other wealthy foreigners have backed some Trump family hotel and golf deals abroad. Beyond his personal enrichment, Trump’s monetizing his office and transactional governing style has proved lucrative to his sons, some top advisers, billionaire buddies, big donors and other allies, say critics.
A CNN poll in late July buttressed criticism of Trump’s monetizing his second term: the poll revealed that 66% of 1,225 respondents said Trump doesn’t put the good of the country over his personal gain and only 34% said he does. Former federal officials, historians and other experts have raised “corruption” concerns and other red flags as Trump has monetized his presidency for personal gain in ways that far exceed any other president’s tenure. In the second term, he didn’t put up any firewall and smashed all guardrails that existed.
The judge assigned to the case later found that because Trump controlled both sides of the case, there was no adversity of parties to provide the court with jurisdiction. Instead, Trump used the court to legitimize what was essentially a gift to him at taxpayer expense.” Since his second term began, Trump has dismissed concerns about conflicts of interests, boasting to the New York Times in January that he has a “very honest family” and that he had never taken his presidential salary. Unlike prior presidents, though, Trump has declined to put his assets in a completely blind trust or divest from his businesses, although ethics experts have urged him to do so.
Despite Trump’s protestations, Trump’s crypto earnings in 2025 are eye-popping – especially in contrast to the dismal returns for many investors and given Trump’s warnings in 2021 that crypto was a “scam”, and a “disaster waiting to happen”. Trump’s strong embrace of crypto came after the industry poured millions of dollars into his 2024 campaign, and he pledged to make the US “the crypto capital of the world” with less regulation. For instance, the crypto venture World Liberty Financial, which Trump and his sons launched in the fall of 2024 with the family of Steve Witkoff, who now is Trump’s special Middle East envoy, brought in $799m in 2025 for Trump, according to public filings.
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