THE GRIFT
Experts: We underestimated Trump's 'volcano of corruption'
President Donald Trump looks on as he exits Air Force One on his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, January 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump has unleashed a "volcano of corruption" as he seeks to endlessly enrich himself in his second term, and according to a new report from The Atlantic, even dedicated ethics watchdogs are admitting that they were not prepared for how far he would go.
In a piece published Sunday morning, The Atlantic spoke with government ethics watchdogs in Washington, D.C., who said that they "thought they were prepared for Trump’s second term," having "quickly learned which possible misuses of taxpayer funds to focus on, which apparent case of profiteering off the presidency to anchor a report around, and which allegations of nepotism or self-dealing to try to pitch to journalists as worthy of a story," while monitoring the now "quaint" excesses of his first term. All of that preparation, however, has proven insufficient.
"This term, the watchdogs are even more alarmed by what they’re witnessing, and they are racing to keep up," the report explained. "Public Citizen added litigators and researchers, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) hired an expert in cryptocurrency. Last year, the Campaign Legal Center filed its highest number of ethics complaints in a single year and launched a tracker of 'corrupt transactions' to ensure that 'the exhaustion factor' doesn’t get in the way of keeping a careful count of such instances, even if the media no longer closely cover each one, Saurav Ghosh, the group’s director of federal-campaign-finance reform, told me."
“I think the big difference in this term is just how blatant all of it is," Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for CREW, told the outlet. "In the first term, there was at least a head nod towards Trump as president being separate from Trump the businessman. Now that’s gone."
The Atlantic noted how meager some of the scandals of Trump's first term now seem in hindsight, including things like Housing Secretary Ben Carson's family purchasing a $31,000 dining set, EPA Head Scott Pruitt spending $43,000 to install a phone boot amd Ivanka Trump endorsing Goya Beans after the company's leadership spoke out in support of her father. Considerable ink was also spilt reporting on his many first-term trips to his own properties and all the taxpayer dollars those trips burned through.
"A year and a half into his second term, Trump has made 270 visits to his properties, marking a 14 percent jump compared with the same point in his first term, according to the CREW tracker (which updates daily)," The Atlantic added. "Trump’s taxpayer tab for golfing trips hit $70 million last fall, HuffPost calculated. If he continues golfing and traveling at the current pace, the analysis showed, this term will run taxpayers $300 million—twice what they paid during his first term. Those costs include protecting the president and his family; the Secret Service spent nearly $100,000 at Trump-owned properties in the first five months of the second term."
It continued later: "But perhaps the most significant category of self-dealing allegations is the one with no first-term analogue. A few days before Trump’s second inauguration, an Emirati royal backed a deal to purchase a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s primary crypto venture, for half a billion dollars. The deal, reportedly signed by Eric Trump, included $187 million up front and at least $31 million set to go toward entities linked to the family of Steve Witkoff, a lead Middle East negotiator for the administration and a co-founder of the crypto firm. A majority of the wealth that Trump has amassed this term, according to financial disclosures, comes from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses."
President Donald Trump looks on as he exits Air Force One on his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, January 31, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
August 09, 2026
ALTERNET
President Donald Trump has unleashed a "volcano of corruption" as he seeks to endlessly enrich himself in his second term, and according to a new report from The Atlantic, even dedicated ethics watchdogs are admitting that they were not prepared for how far he would go.
In a piece published Sunday morning, The Atlantic spoke with government ethics watchdogs in Washington, D.C., who said that they "thought they were prepared for Trump’s second term," having "quickly learned which possible misuses of taxpayer funds to focus on, which apparent case of profiteering off the presidency to anchor a report around, and which allegations of nepotism or self-dealing to try to pitch to journalists as worthy of a story," while monitoring the now "quaint" excesses of his first term. All of that preparation, however, has proven insufficient.
"This term, the watchdogs are even more alarmed by what they’re witnessing, and they are racing to keep up," the report explained. "Public Citizen added litigators and researchers, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) hired an expert in cryptocurrency. Last year, the Campaign Legal Center filed its highest number of ethics complaints in a single year and launched a tracker of 'corrupt transactions' to ensure that 'the exhaustion factor' doesn’t get in the way of keeping a careful count of such instances, even if the media no longer closely cover each one, Saurav Ghosh, the group’s director of federal-campaign-finance reform, told me."
“I think the big difference in this term is just how blatant all of it is," Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for CREW, told the outlet. "In the first term, there was at least a head nod towards Trump as president being separate from Trump the businessman. Now that’s gone."
The Atlantic noted how meager some of the scandals of Trump's first term now seem in hindsight, including things like Housing Secretary Ben Carson's family purchasing a $31,000 dining set, EPA Head Scott Pruitt spending $43,000 to install a phone boot amd Ivanka Trump endorsing Goya Beans after the company's leadership spoke out in support of her father. Considerable ink was also spilt reporting on his many first-term trips to his own properties and all the taxpayer dollars those trips burned through.
"A year and a half into his second term, Trump has made 270 visits to his properties, marking a 14 percent jump compared with the same point in his first term, according to the CREW tracker (which updates daily)," The Atlantic added. "Trump’s taxpayer tab for golfing trips hit $70 million last fall, HuffPost calculated. If he continues golfing and traveling at the current pace, the analysis showed, this term will run taxpayers $300 million—twice what they paid during his first term. Those costs include protecting the president and his family; the Secret Service spent nearly $100,000 at Trump-owned properties in the first five months of the second term."
It continued later: "But perhaps the most significant category of self-dealing allegations is the one with no first-term analogue. A few days before Trump’s second inauguration, an Emirati royal backed a deal to purchase a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s primary crypto venture, for half a billion dollars. The deal, reportedly signed by Eric Trump, included $187 million up front and at least $31 million set to go toward entities linked to the family of Steve Witkoff, a lead Middle East negotiator for the administration and a co-founder of the crypto firm. A majority of the wealth that Trump has amassed this term, according to financial disclosures, comes from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses."
Alexander Willis
August 9, 2026
RAW STORY
Donald Trump, who at the time was the Republican candidate for US president, speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S., July 27, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Wurm/File Photo
A company run by President Donald Trump’s three sons received a mysterious $100 million investment from a crypto fund run by an individual under investigation for money laundering, The New York Times reported Sunday.
In its investigation, the Times uncovered new details about the investor: Guren “Bobby” Zhou, a man with a “shady background” who’s currently under investigation for money laundering in England.
“The curious case of Mr. Zhou illustrates the ease with which buyers with unknown backgrounds and motivations can use the anonymity of cryptocurrency to shower Mr. Trump with money,” the Times’ report reads. “It is not clear how closely World Liberty scrutinized Mr. Zhou’s past, but the money laundering investigation in England was publicly available information, as were portions of Mr. Zhou’s troubled business history.”
In June of 2025, the United Arab Emirates-based Aqua 1 Foundation – run by Zhou – purchased $100 million in digital tokens from World Liberty Financial, an organization run by Trump’s family, along with the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special peace envoy. Those familiar with Zhou's “shady” history expressed confusion at how “he was able to access so much money,” the Times noted.
“[Many former associates] describe Mr. Zhou as a high-octane charmer with a British accent, persuasive enough to sell ice in a snowstorm, as one said,” the Times’ report reads. “But all were stunned to learn that after his departure from London, he was able to purchase $100 million in anything.”
Zhou's red flags include the aforementioned active UK money-laundering investigation, an unpaid $5 million debt from his collapsed flooring business, a failed crypto venture that burned through investor funds, and a string of fabricated corporate partnerships he was forced to walk back, the Times learned.
“In any prior era, a windfall for the president of that size from a foreigner with no public signs of access to that level of wealth would have certainly gone against norms and might have spawned a congressional investigation,” the Times’ report reads.
Trump boys' 'shady' Russia deal ties unmasked in explosive new report
Tom Boggioni
August 7, 2026 2:43PM ET
RAW STORY
FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump, who was then a Republican presidential candidate, is flanked by his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as he speaks during his caucus night watch party in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., January 15, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
A murdered journalist, an organized crime racket, and an alleged scheme to siphon off tens of millions of dollars: These all appear in a new report about a Trump Tower rising in the Caucasus.
The Daily Beast on Friday revealed the dark and tangled history behind a 70-story skyscraper President Donald Trump's sons are building with a company co-owned by an oligarch.
"The president’s sons are trumpeting a new Trump Tower — but not the Moscow oligarch behind one of the companies they named in the deal," wrote the Beast reporter Will Neal. "[That oligarch] has shady ties to Russia."
The development in question is Trump Tower Tbilisi, of which Eric Trump, 42, shared an AI rendering in May with the gushing comment that it "marks our first project in the region."
A joint investigation by The Daily Beast, PunchUp and The Newsground reported one of the groups named on the project, Biograpi Living, is co-owned by Paata Gamgoneishvili — the oligarch in question.
Biograpi Living now insists it has nothing to do with the deal, despite being featured prominently in the Trumps' own announcement.
The White House denied the report had anything to do with Trump
“This has nothing to do with the president,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Beast, "whose investment holdings are held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions."
That didn't stop the Beast from digging into Gamgoneishvili's past.
Among the startling narratives revealed in the report is the brutal rape and murder of Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova.
"Investigative outlet Bivol tied Gamgoneishvili and Isaev in 2019 to the network behind an alleged scheme that siphoned tens of millions of dollars out of the Bulgarian arm of Russian oil giant Lukoil," the Beast reported.
"The year before, a TV journalist who had hosted Bivol’s reporters for a segment about the wider scandal was found murdered. Authorities said her killing was not connected to her work—a conclusion Bivol’s editor disputed."
The Beast also tied Gamgoneishvili, a Moscow trader during the Soviet Union's collapse, to Boris Yeltsin, the former President of Russia.
"Gamgoneishvili backed the then-president through a union of Afghan war veterans and was handed a state medal for it," the Beast reported.
"Yeltsin rewarded the veterans movement with lucrative import perks, and parts of it later curdled into an organized crime racket. Gamgoneishvili ran his own trading business under the union’s wing and rode the same wave to a shopping mall fortune.
"Two of his Moscow malls alone sold to an Austrian fund for around $230 million in 2006."
Tom Boggioni
August 7, 2026 2:43PM ET
RAW STORY
FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump, who was then a Republican presidential candidate, is flanked by his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as he speaks during his caucus night watch party in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., January 15, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
A murdered journalist, an organized crime racket, and an alleged scheme to siphon off tens of millions of dollars: These all appear in a new report about a Trump Tower rising in the Caucasus.
The Daily Beast on Friday revealed the dark and tangled history behind a 70-story skyscraper President Donald Trump's sons are building with a company co-owned by an oligarch.
"The president’s sons are trumpeting a new Trump Tower — but not the Moscow oligarch behind one of the companies they named in the deal," wrote the Beast reporter Will Neal. "[That oligarch] has shady ties to Russia."
The development in question is Trump Tower Tbilisi, of which Eric Trump, 42, shared an AI rendering in May with the gushing comment that it "marks our first project in the region."
A joint investigation by The Daily Beast, PunchUp and The Newsground reported one of the groups named on the project, Biograpi Living, is co-owned by Paata Gamgoneishvili — the oligarch in question.
Biograpi Living now insists it has nothing to do with the deal, despite being featured prominently in the Trumps' own announcement.
The White House denied the report had anything to do with Trump
“This has nothing to do with the president,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Beast, "whose investment holdings are held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions."
That didn't stop the Beast from digging into Gamgoneishvili's past.
Among the startling narratives revealed in the report is the brutal rape and murder of Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova.
"Investigative outlet Bivol tied Gamgoneishvili and Isaev in 2019 to the network behind an alleged scheme that siphoned tens of millions of dollars out of the Bulgarian arm of Russian oil giant Lukoil," the Beast reported.
"The year before, a TV journalist who had hosted Bivol’s reporters for a segment about the wider scandal was found murdered. Authorities said her killing was not connected to her work—a conclusion Bivol’s editor disputed."
The Beast also tied Gamgoneishvili, a Moscow trader during the Soviet Union's collapse, to Boris Yeltsin, the former President of Russia.
"Gamgoneishvili backed the then-president through a union of Afghan war veterans and was handed a state medal for it," the Beast reported.
"Yeltsin rewarded the veterans movement with lucrative import perks, and parts of it later curdled into an organized crime racket. Gamgoneishvili ran his own trading business under the union’s wing and rode the same wave to a shopping mall fortune.
"Two of his Moscow malls alone sold to an Austrian fund for around $230 million in 2006."
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