SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
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 Condon wrote about it for the Associated Press and joins us now to explain how these companies made Trump money. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BERNARD CONDON: Thank you.
DETROW: 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 just the fact that a sitting president netted a billion dollars from a field that he helped set federal government's regulatory stance of?
CONDON: 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 and 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 $1 billion, outstripping much of anything he owns in his property portfolio. The speed is breathtaking.
DETROW: 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 out-scales the decades of various Trump ventures.
CONDON: In revenue and many properties, yes. 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 at the fastest it has in a century since the Trump organization - his family business - started. And yet, crypto triumphs.
DETROW: 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 this second term?
CONDON: 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 that showed the appearance of a conflict, much less a conflict itself. The latter rule, he broke. 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 reluctance to strike a deal that could seem like he's profiting off the presidency is gone.
DETROW: And to that end, do we have much of an idea of who is investing in these crypto ventures, whether it's the Trump meme coin or World Liberty Financial? Do we have a sense who is purchasing this cryptocurrency that makes Trump money? Because there's been all sorts of questions raised of, are people trying to do this to curry favor with the administration on mergers, on regulatory policy, on a whole host of other issues?
CONDON: A Chinese billionaire named Justin Sun bought $75 million of a crypto asset called governance tokens issued by World Liberty, and they plunged in value. Regulators, years ago, said, watch out. These things are dangerous. Meanwhile, the same Chinese billionaire also bought 200 million worth of these kind of souvenir meme coins that Trump issued, and those, too, have plunged in value. So this one man, Justin Sun, has bought $275 million of Trump crypto stuff. Later, he was - he had been sued in the prior administration for duping investors. That lawsuit was put on hold. And eventually the lawsuit was settled for $10 million. Sun denies there was any link between him pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's crypto businesses, and World Liberty says there's absolutely no conflict of interest here.
DETROW: What has the White House's response been to all of this since the disclosures have come out?
CONDON: The White House says that Trump only acts in the interests 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, Trump has done great things for America by helping the crypto industry.
DETROW: Let me ask you this. These 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?
CONDON: I'm interested in finding out more about who bought some of these tokens and coins. The U.S. has strict rules. If you give to a presidential campaign, you have to disclose, 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 on 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 government that put 500 million into 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.
DETROW: Bernard Condon, an investigative reporter for the Associated Press, thank you so much.
CONDON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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