On June 30, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) released Donald Trump’s 2025 annual financial disclosure. This 927-page report traces how closely his personal business and his institutional role now overlap. Set alongside a string of other actions sitting at the edge of what is legal and what is ethical, the document raises a question: Are the guardrails on presidential power still adequate?
According to Forbes, Trump’s current net worth is $6.5 billion, by far the highest peak net worth among all the US presidents. That figure marks a reversal from his first term, when he left office roughly $1.2 billion poorer than he entered it. In January 2017, his net worth was $3.7 billion. By the time he reluctantly passed the torch to president Joe Biden, in January 2021, he had fallen to $2.5 billion.
In his second term, it seems like he has found a way to profit from the presidency. He already tripled his inflow: during 2025 his total income was at least $2.12 billion, while his reported income for 2024 was over $600 million.
Where the money came from
Most of the figures in the disclosure are reported as ranges rather than exact amounts; unless noted otherwise, this piece uses the floor value of each range. The disclosure reports more than $1.37 billion in earnings and proceeds connected to Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures — more than half of his total 2025 reported income.
The timing is difficult to ignore: Trump’s crypto businesses expanded as his administration pursued a markedly crypto-friendly policy agenda. He made more than $600 million, thanks to the so-called “memecoin” $TRUMP, launched days before his second inauguration, and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens, digital collectibles recorded on a blockchain) licensing. More than $500 million came from the World Liberty Financial. This cryptocurrency venture was co-founded in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign by, among others, Trump family members and Zach and Alex Witkoff, the sons of White House adviser Steve Witkoff, current Special Envoy for the Peace Missions and to the Middle East. Steve Witkoff is one of the most influential figures in the current US foreign policy.
The profits from crypto and digital assets happened as the administration issued an executive order promoting a pro-innovation approach and appointing crypto-friendly regulators. Through another executive order it also created a “Strategic” Bitcoin Reserve, and ultimately signed the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act) to regulate stablecoins.
Using floor values from Schedule 1, the section listing outside income, Gulf States were a significant source of Trump’s reported foreign revenue in 2025. More than $38 million came just from investments in the area of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. But that’s modest compared with the last gift Qatar gave the President in May: A heavily modified Boeing 747-8 jet valued at roughly $400 million, one of the most valuable gifts ever received by the US government. Qatar’s Prime Minister said it was just a “government-to-government dealing,” but the future plans for the ownership of the luxurious plane are still questioned.
The pattern goes beyond foreign governments. Trump’s financial interests also intersect with domestic companies over which his administration can exercise considerable influence. For instance, his disclosure shows an income of $87 million from five legal settlements with major media and technology companies: ABC, CBS, Meta, YouTube and Twitter. This raises questions about the relationship between companies facing litigation from the president and an administration with substantial regulatory power over the media and technology industries.
Investments dominate the disclosure: three-quarters of it concerns Trump’s accounts, which made over 20,000 transactions in the past year. Several trades occurred shortly before government announcements that affected the same companies or sectors. On April 8, the day before Trump announced the tariff pause, his accounts bought 327 individual stocks worth up to $12.8 million; the next day, S&P 500 posted one of the biggest single-day gains on record. On August 18, the accounts purchased Intel stock four days before Trump announced a $9 billion federal equity stake in the company, a week after he met with Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Throughout the year, his accounts repeatedly bought Palantir Technologies as the administration expanded Palantir’s contract portfolio, including with ICE, and bought GEO Group, the private prison operator and major ICE contractor, on at least ten separate dates as the executive branch expanded immigration detention capacity.
Player and referee
Even if every single trade was pure coincidence, the structural fact remains: he has the power to move markets through official acts, and he simultaneously holds a personal financial position that benefits from those same acts.
That overlap raises questions about whether the safeguards governing presidential conflicts of interest are adequate. The Trump Organization states that the accounts are managed by independent financial institutions. But independent management is not the same as a blind trust: Trump can still know what assets he owns and, potentially, what interests may be affected by his decisions. Questions around transparency arise as well. The STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act requires lawmakers and staff to disclose trades exceeding $1,000 within 30 days. Trump filed the reports covering some of his trades (specifically those executed before the tariff pause announcement) more than one year after the STOCK Act’s 30-day deadline. As a result, he will incur a $200 late filing fee.
In the private sector, insider-trading law and corporate blackout periods are designed to prevent people with non-public information about market-moving decisions from trading on that information. Corporate executives also face mandatory disclosures and pre-scheduled trading plans to limit the risk of conflicts. The President of the United States, however, is exempt from the conflict-of-interest statute that applies to other executive-branch officials.
The risk of conflicts of interest becomes even more noticeable in Trump’s media empire. On August 1, Trump Media & Technology Group launched a subscription to Truth API, a software that allows subscribers to directly have access to high profile Truth social posts (including President Trump’s) milliseconds before they are published in the public feed. This service costs up to $100,000 per month, with a discounted plan of $60,000 per month if you sign up for a multi-year plan. The service effectively turns the president’s public communications into a premium financial product.
The rules that never came
For decades, this intersection between private business and public office was filled by norms rather than statute: presidents voluntarily placed their assets in blind trusts, sold off holdings before taking office, or simply had few enough business interests for the question not to arise. Trump has done none of these.
Congress has had chances to clear this grey area and hasn’t. A House bill banning stock trading by members of Congress passed this year, but it defines “covered individuals” as lawmakers and their families only, leaving the President untouched. Moreover, it allows them to continue owning and selling stocks they already have. A narrower bill aimed specifically at the president and vice-president, requiring divestment into a blind trust, was introduced in January and has remained stalled there ever since. And there is the CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act), a bill designed to establish a market structure for cryptocurrencies. It has stalled in the Senate for months over an ethics agreement that would bar public officials (and their spouses) from issuing or sponsoring digital assets. However, the proposal doesn’t seem to affect Trump’s fortune. It would not apply to his children. It would not touch any of his existing crypto ventures. And it would automatically sunset on January 20, 2029, so a future DOJ could not prosecute Trump for potential violations. As they say, the house always wins.
[Cheyenne Torres edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
