Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Substack entry for July 1, 2026. It reports on Trump's corrupt receipt of the $400 million jet from Qatar; the $500 million no-bid contract for Trump's ballroom; Trump and Howard Lutnick's deal for securing from the president of Kazakhstan access to one of the largest untapped reserves of tungsten in the world for an obscure U.S. company, Kaz Resources, and the involvement of "an investment firm partly owned by Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric took a 20% stake in a corporate entity related to the project, and the investment firm run by Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, Cantor Fitzgerald, helped to raise $210 million for a related entity, likely pocketing millions in fees."
She reports that there are "at least fourteen companies with ties to the Trumps and Lutnicks that are working with the federal government on mining deals for materials on which the U.S. depends. The administration has either provided or is considering providing more than $8.9 billion in taxpayer money to those companies."Trump has done pretty well in cryptocurrency since his election:
Yesterday a federal filing showed that Trump took in about $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures last year. Bernard Condon of the Associated Press reports that Trump made more than $500 million from the World Liberty Financial venture with his sons and Zach Witkoff, who is the venture’s chief executive officer and the son of Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. Much of that money came when an investment fund associated with the leadership of the United Arab Emirates bought almost half of World Liberty Financial.
Trump also made more than $600 million from meme coins stamped with his face.
In office, Trump has pushed policies that help the cryptocurrency industry and avoid regulations.
How about insider trading on the stock market?
Donald Shaw of Sludge, an outlet dedicated to examining special interest spending in politics, reported today that the day before Trump paused his tariffs for 90 days, his investment accounts took advantage of the market lows caused by the tariffs to buy as much as $12.8 million worth of stocks. His announcement of the pause caused a huge spike in stock values, with the S&P jumping nearly 10%, one of the biggest gains in the history of that index. Trump neglected to report the transactions for almost a year past the required deadline, but the penalty for a late filing, Shaw notes, is only $200.
Journalist White notes that Trump is “essentially day trading,” including in companies operating in sectors where “the Trump administration is actively focused on setting policy.” She notes that Trump owns between $12.5 million and $58 million in NVIDIA and between $9.5 million and $46.5 million in Amazon, both companies “whose fortunes rise and fall based on decisions made in the White House.”
She reports that the Trumps have taken about $2.3 billion in income from crypto ventures since the beginning of Trump's second presidency, while investors in those ventures have lost about the same amount. She says "the Trump family structured its crypto ventures so Trump made money on the front end, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction fees, for example. Then, when his coins plummeted in value, the investors who were left holding the bag suffered vast losses."
There's more.
