Key Takeaways
- Circle shareholder J. Benjamin Greenberg sued Trump and World Liberty Financial in Washington on Oct. 22.
- The suit targets a $500 million WLFI stake sale and a $2 billion MGX deal settled in the USD1 stablecoin.
- A judge has yet to rule, while Circle, World Liberty and the White House all reject the case.
The Money Trail
The litigation rests on two transactions:
- The first is a $500 million agreement for a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial (WLFI), backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser. According to the complaint, that deal was agreed days before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, with payouts flowing to Trump after he took office.
- The second is a $2 billion investment in Binance by MGX, an Abu Dhabi fund that Tahnoon chairs. MGX settled that investment using USD1, the stablecoin issued by the Trump family’s crypto venture. The complaint calls the arrangement a “scheme” to inflate the value of the president’s crypto holdings.
The filing does not hold back, stating:
This action is about the President of the United States corruptly profiting from more than $2 billion in payments from a foreign government in direct violation of the Constitution. No president in American history has profited from his office so brazenly.
Why a Circle Investor Is the One Suing
The plaintiff is J. Benjamin Greenberg, a former Circle employee who still holds the company’s stock. He filed a derivative suit, meaning he is suing on Circle’s behalf rather than his own.
Circle issues USDC, the second-largest dollar stablecoin, and Greenberg alleges that foreign money routed through USD1 left Circle “unable to compete.”
Bitcoin.com News recently reported that Circle keeps just 7% of its $1.4 billion in revenue as profit, a thin margin in a market where a rival stablecoin can land a $2 billion settlement in one deal.
The suit also names U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, whose family co-founded World Liberty, along with four related limited liability companies. Coverage from several outlets notes that Greenberg points to Commerce and Treasury Department approvals that benefited the Trump family as part of the alleged pattern.
Nobody Wants Their Name on It
Circle moved quickly to distance itself and a spokesperson for the company said it “did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing.”
World Liberty was blunter and representative David Wachsman said the firm “is compliant with all US laws and regulations,” and its counsel, Bill Burck of Quinn Emanuel, said the filing “sounds more like a partisan press release than a lawsuit.” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNBC it was “yet another frivolous lawsuit” and that there are “no conflicts of interest.”
Greenberg’s lawyer, Matt Pelikan of Evergreen Legal, however, noted:
We’re suing to stop the corruption and to force President Trump to return the profits to American taxpayers.
The Bigger Ledger
The money at stake is not small given that Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related income in his 2025 financial disclosure, and a recent analysis put World Liberty’s earnings above $1.4 billion for the Trump and Witkoff families since November 2024.
This is also not World Liberty’s first courtroom fight of 2026, as Tron founder Justin Sun sued the company in April, alleging it froze his WLFI tokens. That case is a contract dispute between investors, while Greenberg’s suit goes after the president himself under the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, which bars federal officeholders from accepting payments from foreign states without congressional consent.
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