WSJ editors tear into Trump family's 'brazenly open' cash grab: 'Demeans the office'

President Donald Trump and his family got a barbed tongue-lashing from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board on Wednesday, as they slammed the scope and scale of their self-enrichment schemes at the expense of the taxpayer.

The new financial disclosures from 2025, released this week, show Trump and his family are "cashing in on the Presidency in big and sketchy ways," the board wrote — so as to "demean the office" with their "graft" schemes.

Among the revelations are that the family made $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures, which "includes $635 million in royalties from the memecoin that Mr. Trump launched days before his inauguration" — and that's just the start of it. "Another $593 million came from token and equity sales by World Liberty Financial, whose co-founders include the President, his sons, and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Mr. Witkoff’s son, Zach, is its CEO."

That's a big problem, the board wrote, because World Liberty sits at the intersection of both foreign influence campaigns and Trump's ties to convicted criminals: "Abu Dhabi used World Liberty’s stablecoin to invest in the Binance crypto platform," the board wrote. "Binance pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws and Iran sanctions. Its co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, was pardoned by Mr. Trump in October."

Crypto isn't the only shady deal laid out in the almost 1,000-page report. There are also shady mining deals undertaken with U.S. government partnership that the Trump family happens to hold a stake in, like a Kazakhstan tungsten venture.

Even if the Trumps haven't violated a single law, wrote the board, "it’s still an unseemly display of using the Presidency for family profit," and it beggars belief "the Trump boys would be able to do the same deals if Dad wasn’t in the Oval Office. The main difference between Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings and the Trump projects is that the Trumps are brazenly open about theirs."

Ultimately, the board concluded, overseas actors could decide "they can buy American goodwill or favors if they cut the Trumps in on the action. Americans, and especially his supporters, deserve better from this or any President."