The Latest: Federal filing shows Trump took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year
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5:10 AM on Wednesday, July 1
By The Associated Press
President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.
Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate.
Also, the House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers home early for the holiday recess, Speaker Mike Johnson ’s majority once again ground to a standstill by a Republican revolt over their own party’s agenda. In this case, it’s a standoff blocking the annual defense bill as Republicans push to include Trump’s own priority, the SAVE America Act, a strict voter ID bill.
Here's the latest:
Financial disclosures show Trump made roughly $1.2 billion off his crypto currency ventures last year, but the president claimed he’s not directing his investments.
“We have funds that run my money,” Trump said. “I made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them. I never, I don’t even speak to them.”
Trump claimed his financial gains largely came from a rising stock market and that those profits help the country as a whole.
“We’re all profiting,” Trump said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”
But not all Americans have access to the stock market.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that 38% of Americans don’t have exposure to the stock market.
Trump beamed with pride about the new Air Force One before its initial voyage, telling reporters pictures of the Boeing 747 given to him by Qatar would win the Pulitzer Prize.
The plane was given to the U.S. by Qatar and Trump relayed how the exchange happened. He said he asked Boeing — which is set to deliver new planes for the presidential jet in 2028 — if there were any counties that had potential substitutes in the interim.
“I said, ‘Who has the best one?’ They said, ‘Qatar. There’s no, there’s never been a plane like it.’ Frankly, we couldn’t build a plane like this because we wouldn’t be willing to spend the kind of money necessary. They spent top dollar,” Trump said.
The president said he went to Qatar and asked to use its plane for a period of time and the emir said he would instead give the plane to Trump. The president described the plane as “a gift from a country that has treated us very well.”
“You’re going to get a kick out of it,” Trump said to reporters about the plane. “There’s just nothing like it.”
President Trump’s administration looked to the Supreme Court to greenlight its sweeping hard-line immigration agenda and, by and large, it got the backing it was looking for with one key exception — birthright citizenship.
After lower courts repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration, the nation’s top court allowed it to terminate temporary protections for people fleeing war or strife. It gave immigration officers greater leeway in dealing with green card holders returning from abroad, and it allowed the government to limit the number of people who can apply for asylum.
In being asked to serve as an enabler of the Republican president’s contentious immigration crackdown, the Supreme Court showed deference to constitutional guardrails in the key case of birthright citizenship that would have redefined who can be an American. In ruling against the administration, the court upheld the idea that people who are born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, are Americans.
For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.
Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.
Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.
Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.
“It’s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I can’t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.”
Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll asked a judge Tuesday to require President Donald Trump to pay her $5 million from a jury verdict that concluded Trump sexually abused her in the 1990s and defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019.
Lawyers for Carroll filed papers in Manhattan federal court to say Trump is unjustly trying to further delay release of the money after the Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal of the 2023 civil jury verdict.
The amount has grown to nearly $5.8 million with interest and should be required by the court to be disbursed, the lawyers wrote, saying Trump has resumed his defamatory attacks against Carroll as his lawyers considered asking the high court to reconsider its decision.
The jury reached its verdict in a trial that Trump did not attend after Carroll testified that she was sexually abused by Trump in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a midtown Manhattan luxury department store after a flirtatious and friendly chance encounter between them turned violent.
Trump will visit North Dakota on Wednesday to see the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a massive facility exploring the 26th president’s life, built in the rugged, lonely landscape where the young easterner built his conservation values while ranching and hunting in the 1880s.
The 96,000-square-foot library opens over the weekend on July 4, the pinnacle date of celebrations this year honoring the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But Trump is coming early to see the $450 million project, a push of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum from when he was governor of North Dakota, and bringing the official celebrations of the nation’s birth to a region synonymous with its westward expansion.
All living presidents were invited to the grand opening of the library, which joins more than a dozen such libraries throughout the country examining the lives and legacies of U.S. presidents from Ronald Reagan in California, to Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York to Herbert Hoover in Iowa. The Obama Presidential Center recently opened in Chicago, bringing together four former presidents for the occasion.
A polarizing Harvard astronomer known for splashy theories about alien visits has been tapped by the White House to lead a team of outside scientists to study the national security risks posed by UFOs.
Avi Loeb, a cosmologist who studied black holes and served as head of Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020, was recently appointed to helm a new scientific advisory council tasked with investigating the origins of mysterious orbs and other objects reported by military personnel in recent years. It’s part of President Donald Trump’s push to declassify more information about the issue.
Loeb’s team will report to a new White House panel focused on UFOs, now often referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.
For the last decade, Loeb has been scanning the skies and seas for evidence of intelligent alien life. He began the quest in 2017 as scientists puzzled over an interstellar object soaring by Earth. While others proposed it was a comet or ice chunk, Loeb said it could be a thin “light sail” detached from an alien spacecraft.
As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this weekend, the legislative branch has momentarily called it quits.
The House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers home early for the holiday recess, Speaker Mike Johnson ’s majority once again ground to a standstill by a Republican revolt over their own party’s agenda.
In this case, it’s a standoff blocking the annual defense bill — with pay raises for the troops and other matters at a time of war — as the renegade Republicans push to include President Donald Trump’s own priority, the SAVE America Act, a strict voter ID bill. Last week, the Senate similarly shuttered after Trump’s demands.
The emptying Capitol provides another snapshot of the imbalance of power in Washington as a headstrong executive confronts a weakened Congress.
President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.
Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.
Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.
Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.
Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.
