Trump: ‘Didn’t Know’ About $500M Abu Dhabi Bet On WLFI

US President Donald Trump said he was unaware of the $500 million investment by an Abu Dhabi royal into World Liberty Financial, pushing responsibility to his sons as questions mount over foreign money, crypto rails, and US policy decisions.

Asked at the White House on Feb. 2 about a The Wall Street Journal report that the Abu Dhabi royal family invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” into the Trump-linked venture, Trump flatly denied knowledge and framed the operation as a family-run side project.

“Well, I don’t know about it. I know that crypto is a big thing and they like it. A lot of people like it,” Trump said. “The people behind me like it. My sons are handling that. My family is handling it. And I guess they get investments from different people. But I’m not.” He then pivoted to geopolitics: “I have all I can handle right now with Iran and with Russia and Ukraine and with all the things we’re doing.”

Why The Trump Deal Raises Questions

The denial lands amid a fast-building paper trail around World Liberty Financial’s cap table and its ties to Gulf-linked capital. According to the report, a firm associated with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal tied to the emirate’s state investment machinery, acquired roughly 49% of World Liberty Financial in a deal valued at about $500 million, with documents reviewed by the Journal indicating the agreement was struck just days before Trump took office.

The report also describes why the timing is politically combustible: months after the reported stake purchase, the Trump administration moved ahead with supplying the United Arab Emirates with advanced US-made AI chips despite prior concerns about diversion risks to China, intensifying the perception that business and statecraft are entangled.

World Liberty Financial, for its part, has rejected the suggestion that any government action was influenced by the investment. A spokesperson said that neither Trump nor Steve Witkoff was involved in the transaction and called claims tying it to the chips decision “100% false,” while White House counsel said the president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities.

The controversy has a second, crypto-native layer: the same Abu Dhabi orbit has already shown it is willing to use World Liberty-linked instruments as settlement rails. Abu Dhabi-backed MGX used World Liberty’s dollar-pegged stablecoin (USD1) to settle a $2 billion investment into Binance, a deal publicly discussed by World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff at TOKEN2049 in Dubai.

That combination has given critics an easy narrative hook: foreign state-linked capital gaining proximity to a US president’s family business while policy decisions affecting the same country move through Washington.

At press time, WLFI traded at $0.13.