\n<\/p>\n
The most infamous financial scandal in US presidential history \u2013 the 1920s Teapot Dome affair \u2013 involved then president Warren G Harding\u2019s interior secretary, Albert Fall, taking roughly $400,000 in bribes. Adjusted for inflation, that\u2019s about $6m today. Last year, Donald Trump made at least $2.2bn; his single year of income is on the order of 200 to 300 times larger than the bribe that defined \u201cpresidential corruption\u201d in the American imagination for a century.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s taken for granted that Trump flogs items like Bibles and gold sneakers as a way to wring more money from his loyal base. But of the president\u2019s $2.2bn, at least $1.4bn came from his crypto businesses. That\u2019s an extraordinary achievement, even for an unscrupulous sitting president. How exactly did he do it without any prior background in crypto?<\/p>\n
Many believe the answer is that he had help from a Chinese crypto billionaire called Justin Sun.<\/p>\n
double quotation markIf crypto wants to succeed, we need to break the boundaries between traditional finance and the crypto worldJustin Sun<\/p>\n
Sun is perhaps most famous for buying an artwork called Comedian \u2013 consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall \u2013 for more than $6m, and then eating it. But the maverick entrepreneur, who refers to himself as \u201cCrypto\u2019s billionaire barker\u201d, is better known in Washington as the real financial power behind the Trump family\u2019s crypto fortune \u2013 investing nearly $200m of his own fortune into Trump\u2019s digital asset ventures.<\/p>\n
Recently, Sun and the Trumps\u2019 crypto love-in has curdled into dueling lawsuits \u2013 with Sun accusing Trump\u2019s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, of illegally freezing his assets, and World Liberty countersuing him for defamation.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a documentary film-maker and over the past year I\u2019ve been making a film for the BBC about the next generation of billionaires. That means I got to talk to Sun during and after this fortune-and-fallout saga with the Trumps in multiple interviews. The story of their financial entanglement raises concerning questions about Trump\u2019s cozy relationship to the crypto industry.<\/p>\n
Born in Qinghai in north-western China, Sun has made billions from crypto. His first big win came in 2017 with his crypto coin called TRX, which he offered on his Tron blockchain, a global, decentralized software network on which people can buy and sell cryptocurrencies. He told me it was supposed to be like \u201cusing blockchain technology to send money like you send emails on the internet\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was also an appealing platform for criminals and terrorists to store their money. \u201cThe marquee names are Hezbollah and Hamas,\u201d said Chris Harland-Dunaway, the Verge\u2019s investigative journalist who reported on much of Sun\u2019s crypto dealing, \u201cbut North Korean hackers also are active users on the Tron blockchain.\u201d Some estimate that in some years almost half of all illicit crypto transactions (such as criminals laundering illegal proceeds) happened on Tron.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Eric Trump, Zach Witkoff and Justin Sun participate in a session during the Token 2049 crypto conference in Dubai on 1 May 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cHe became a sort of serial entrepreneur in the tech space, and he was always prepared to bend the rules or push technology as far as it could go in terms of what the authorities were willing to accept or tolerate,\u201d says Harland-Dunaway.<\/p>\n When presented with claims about Tron\u2019s illicit use, Sun said through a spokesperson: \u201cBad actors exist. The blockchain is just the latest in a long history of agnostic technologies to be misused \u2013 you don\u2019t blame the internet for cybercrime, or cash for drug trafficking.\u201d The spokesperson said that since Tron helped launch the T3 Financial Crime Unit to combat illicit activities in September 2024, it has helped freeze more than $450m in illicit assets and been praised by crypto regulators.<\/p>\n But Sun also likes to deflect questions of illegality with crypto idealism, touting his belief in technology\u2019s power to bestow individual sovereignty, liberating people from the strictures of nation and government.<\/p>\n \u201cEating [a] banana \u2026 that\u2019s all they know about [me],\u201d Sun told me. \u201cBut I believe in a world with individual sovereignty. So basically everyone can use technology to do anything they want \u2026 If crypto wants to succeed, we need to break the boundaries between traditional finance and the crypto world. We want 8 billion people all on blockchain.\u201d<\/p>\n But in March 2023, Sun\u2019s large fortune was threatened by regulators. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under the Biden administration, alleged Sun ran more than 600,000 fake trades between accounts he controlled in order to artificially inflate the trading volume of TRX, and that he personally pocketed $31m from illegal, unregistered sales of TRX.<\/p>\n They also charged him with hiding payments to celebrities who promoted his tokens to the public. They pointed to a period in February 2021 when a series of surprising names began tweeting about TRX, the crypto token associated with Tron. Lindsay Lohan, who had previously displayed no interest in crypto, posted: \u201cExploring #DeFi and already liking $JST, $SUN on $TRX. Super fast and 0 fee. Good job @justinsuntron.\u201d Ne-Yo, Akon, Jake Paul and Lil Yachty all posted similar tweets. It is against section 17(b) of the Securities Act for a celebrity to tout a security without disclosing they are being financially compensated to do so. All five celebrities have settled with the SEC for amounts between $40,000 and $200,000 without admitting or denying allegations. None have publicly commented except Lohan, whose spokesperson clarified she was unaware of the disclosure requirement.<\/p>\n During the investigation, Sun avoided the US out of fear of arrest, the Wall Street Journal reported.<\/p>\n Sun\u2019s spokesperson said he vigorously denied any wrongdoing from day one of the SEC case. On the issue of whether Sun avoided the US for fear of arrest, the spokesperson said that he didn\u2019t enter the country because he had Covid concerns.<\/p>\n But Gary Gensler, who was then head of the SEC, told me in April 2024: \u201cWe had very significant ongoing actions with regard to where we\u2019ve alleged significant fraud around Justin Sun and Tron,\u201d Gensler said. \u201cThis is a field that is rife with fraud and scams and mischief.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Trump entered the White House.<\/p>\n The majority of Trump\u2019s new wealth comes from his family\u2019s crypto ventures, World Liberty Financial and the $Trump memecoin. Both ventures are dressed up with the language of decentralization and financial innovation.<\/p>\n World Liberty Financial was started in September 2024, founded by Trump, with his special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, a co-founder emeritus. The company is run in part by Trump\u2019s sons, including Donald Jr, Eric and Barron, as well as Witkoff\u2019s son Zach. Trump officially stepped down from the company once he took office, but his family trust still owns and profits from it.<\/p>\n double quotation mark[The Trump family] needed to raise more than $20m. Justin just knocked it out of the parkChris Harland-Dunaway<\/p>\n The highly technical and esoteric nature of crypto is intentionally opaque, but World Liberty Financial basically sells what it calls a \u201cgovernance token\u201d, $WLFI, which the company says allows investors who purchase it to have a say in how the company is run.<\/p>\n In decentralized finance models, the funds earned through purchase of governance tokens are supposed to be reinvested into the token\u2019s ecosystem. But with $WLFI, 75% of all profits from token sales go directly to the Trump family trust.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an ambitious, brazen proposal \u2013 one that very few traditional investors would be likely to go for. For it to work, it needed a large injection of cash and support from someone with legitimacy in the crypto world. Despite the profile of its founders, at the time of $WLFI\u2019s launch it struggled to get investment. The founders drastically cut their fundraising target from $300m to $30m.<\/p>\n Then Sun entered the picture. Shortly after Trump was elected, Sun bought $75m worth of $WLFI tokens. Sun\u2019s crypto pedigree gave the venture the legitimacy it needed to gain further investment, and they soon generated $550m in token sales. Forbes called Sun\u2019s investment a \u201cbailout\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Justin Sun first \u2018became a fan of Trump\u2019 while growing up in Guangdong, China, where he learned English by pirating episodes of The Apprentice.<\/span> Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cFor the Trump family to get money from this project, they needed to raise more than $20m,\u201d Harland-Dunaway told me. \u201cJustin just knocked it out of the park \u2013 way over that threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n With Sun involved, perception of the company had shifted from probable wheeze to serious potential player.<\/p>\n Sun told me how he first \u201cbecame a fan of Trump\u201d when he was growing up in Guangdong, China, where he learned English by pirating episodes of The Apprentice on BitTorrent, a company he would later acquire.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump family is a very important US business family,\u201d Sun said. \u201cSo we want to be their important long-term partners. It\u2019s not only about policy and decision-making \u2013 the Trump family has its own brand. The Trump Tower is everywhere \u2026 Collaborating with Trump tokens will benefit crypto as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n The summer after his investment, Sun posted a selfie with Donald Jr on Instagram. He also bought more than $100m worth of Trump\u2019s memecoin, $Trump, and launched it on the Tron platform so it could be bought and sold there. \u201c$TRUMP on TRON is the currency of #MAGA,\u201d Sun tweeted. His initial purchases of the memecoin won him a private dinner with the president at his golf course in Washington DC and a $100,000 golden Trump watch.<\/p>\n It could be argued that Sun simply saw his stake in $WLFI as a shrewd investment with the bonus of influence with the White House, but the $WLFI tokens were non-transferable at the time, so Sun couldn\u2019t cash out a cent. The Trumps, meanwhile, walked away with an estimated $400m.<\/p>\n So why pour so much money into the Trumps\u2019 crypto schemes when the returns were being hamstrung? Some have pointed to the timing of his investment, questioning whether it could be related to an investigation by the SEC into Sun.<\/p>\n Harland-Dunaway said that a couple months after Sun invested $75m into $WLFI, \u201cJustin Sun and the SEC together filed a motion to the judge who\u2019s overseeing the SEC case against Justin to put a stay on the case \u2026 This is a new SEC at this point. One appointed by Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Several months after that, Tron was launched on the Nasdaq stock exchange via a reverse merger deal that was brokered by Dominari Securities, a firm that names Donald Jr and Eric among its board of advisers.<\/p>\n In March of this year, the court dismissed all allegations brought by the SEC against Sun and Tron Foundation Limited with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refiled.<\/p>\n I asked Sun what it meant that Tron had become a publicly listed company despite the historical legal accusations against it.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think it\u2019s just totally a perfect answer to all the unfair accusations before,\u201d he beamed in response.<\/p>\n When I asked him whether he could have done any of this without the Trumps, he was quick to praise them.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I want to express my really big appreciation to the current Trump administration,\u201d Sun said. \u201cI think they really did everything for crypto [to] happen in [the] United States and for crypto development.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trumps and Sun have firmly denied any connection between the investigation being paused and the investment. At the time, the SEC also paused several other civil cases into crypto companies. The case against Sun was eventually settled, with the SEC agreeing to dismiss remaining claims against Sun and the Tron and BitTorrent foundations in exchange for a $10m penalty paid by Rainberry Inc, the company behind Sun\u2019s BTT token.<\/p>\n I tried to ask Sun about the relationship between the SEC investigation and his Trump investments in an interview last December in Hong Kong. I pointed specifically to the timing of the SEC investigation being paused, around the time that he invested heavily in the Trump family crypto projects.<\/p>\n His PR team wouldn\u2019t let him answer these questions: \u201cNo comment on the current case, Matt.\u201d I tried to redirect the conversation to Sun, but he repeated the \u201cno comment\u201d response.<\/p>\n <\/span>A cartoon image of Trump with bitcoin tokens at a Coinhero store in Hong Kong, China, on 7 March 2025. <\/span> Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Sun later told the Guardian: \u201cJustin\u2019s crypto purchases are wholly unrelated to the SEC\u2019s decision to pause the enforcement action against him. The suggestion that any crypto purchase was linked to the decision to stay and review that action is completely baseless and attempts to create causation from temporal proximity, which is patently contrary to widely reported public approach the SEC was taking to crypto cases in general at that same time.\u201d<\/p>\n But lawmakers have asked questions about the timing. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat senator, wrote to the SEC chair to ask why Margaret Ryan, the agency\u2019s director of the division of enforcement, left her role shortly before the SEC dismissed fraud charges against Sun, citing reporting in Reuters that Ryan wanted to pursue enforcement against Sun and was blocked. \u201cThis is a clear example of how President Trump\u2019s blatant crypto corruption creates back doors for his family\u2019s business partners, creating a pay-to-play enforcement regime that turns a blind eye to grave threats to national security and consumer protection,\u201d Blumenthal wrote.<\/p>\n A representative for Trump told the Guardian: \u201cAll of the president\u2019s assets are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions. There are no conflicts of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n In August 2025, the friendship between Sun and the Trumps had begun to fall apart when it turned out Sun didn\u2019t have as much influence at World Liberty Financial as he thought.<\/p>\n The $WLFI governance token is meant to give buyers like Sun the chance to vote on things, but a feature written into the coin\u2019s self-executing computer code actually gives all the real power to a handful of secret admins. These anonymous admins have the technical capability to exercise near-total control over any wallet\u2019s funds, and could theoretically disregard the results of any vote.<\/p>\n It appeared that these admins quietly upgraded the code in August to give designated wallets the power to freeze any holder\u2019s funds. They then unlocked 20% of the tokens for sale, making the Trumps an estimated $5bn. But Sun said his tokens were frozen.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is the irony,\u201d Harland-Dunaway said. \u201cThey\u2019re evangelizing a decentralized banking system on the one hand. But then when someone appears to be about to withdraw their investment from their venture, they froze it. Which is a very centralized way of running a cryptocurrency project.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Donald Trump displays the Genius Act after signing it at the White House on 18 July 2025. <\/span> Photograph: Brendan Smialowski\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n World Liberty Financial alleged Sun had violated investment terms by moving about $9m in tokens; Sun denied any intent to sell, but by December 2025 his frozen position had lost an estimated $60m in value.<\/p>\n When I asked him about this in Hong Kong last December, his opinion on World Liberty Financial had shifted drastically from earlier that summer, when he was heaping evangelical praise on the company. Now he was highly critical.<\/p>\n \u201cFundamentally speaking, I think they just don\u2019t understand the value of cryptocurrency and why it got invented in the first place,\u201d Sun said. \u201c[World Liberty Financial] see crypto when crypto [is] strong, right? So they think, you know: \u2018If we are allies with crypto, we can make money, right?\u2019 \u2026 It\u2019s worrisome, right, because World Liberty Financial has all the freezing functions. They can freeze everybody\u2019s assets, which is wrong, and they need to take [that function] out.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, representatives for World Liberty Financial said that Sun agreed to World Liberty\u2019s freezing authority, which was spelled out in the token unlock agreement that Sun signed.<\/p>\n double quotation mark[Sun] is convinced that these actions are not at all consistent with the president\u2019s valuesSpokesperson for Justin Sun<\/p>\n The argument soon became a legal one. Sun sued World Liberty Financial on 21 April in California federal court over it using what he called a \u201cbackdoor blacklisting function\u201d to freeze his tokens. He also accused the company of treating him like a \u201cpersonal ATM\u201d. World Liberty Financial responded by saying: \u201cSee you in court pal,\u201d and countersued him in Florida on 4 May, accusing him of shorting World Liberty and defaming the company. Both lawsuits remain unresolved, with neither side\u2019s allegations yet tested in court.<\/p>\n Sun\u2019s spokesperson insists Sun still supports Trump and \u201cis convinced that these actions are not at all consistent with the president\u2019s values\u201d.<\/p>\n The Trump family owes a great deal of its huge crypto windfall to Sun\u2019s support. The profit-per-sale model and top-down control revealed in its spat with Sun raises serious questions about whether World Liberty Financial was ever truly motivated by the lofty goals of decentralization it projected. Given that its white paper is emblazoned with a portrait of Trump splattered with gold paint, and one of its co-founders, Chase Herro, once said of crypto that: \u201cYou can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for $1bn if the story\u2019s right, because people will buy it,\u201d perhaps these questions should have been there from the start.<\/p>\n For Sun\u2019s part, he at least claims to still believe in the dream of crypto.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to remind ourselves,\u201d he told me, \u201cwhy we started crypto in the first place. It\u2019s never about money \u2026 We just want to do a financial infrastructure better than the traditional one.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump family are certainly still bullish on crypto. Crypto is not a generator of money \u2013 their fortune will continue to grow mostly at the expense of ordinary retail investors who have now lost the billions they collectively ploughed into the president\u2019s ventures, and now also at the expense of wealthy investors like Sun.<\/p>\n During the 2023 New York financial fraud lawsuit against him and his three eldest children, Trump once explained why he wanted to become president: \u201cBecause of the brand,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s the hottest brand in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n When pressed on the total brand value of being the US president, he estimated \u201c$10bn\u201d.<\/p>\n Sun\u2019s complaint agrees that the brand is valuable, but puts it differently: \u201cWorld Liberty\u2019s operators have used the project as a golden opportunity to leverage the Trump brand to profit through fraud.\u201d<\/p>\nA new friendship<\/h2>\n
Crypto divorce<\/h2>\n