[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 13, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2872-S2874]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Middle East
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, usually, public corruption happens in
secret. The politicians that do it know it is wrong to accept money in
exchange for favorable government treatment, and so they hide it until
they are found out.
A textbook example would be Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, who in
the 1990s was quietly taking bribes from businessmen who wanted to get
licenses for riverboat casinos.
In the late 1990s, Edwards was convicted of the crimes of extortion,
racketeering, and money laundering. The way in which he was doing it
was like out of a movie. In one instance, a businessman handed the
Governor a suitcase full of $100 bills, totaling $400,000--all in order
to get a 6-to-0 commission ruling in favor of his casino. Eventually,
as with most all corrupt officials who are taking money privately,
Edwards was discovered, he was disgraced, and he went to jail.
As we speak, our President Donald Trump is going to the Middle East
on a public corruption tour. He is no less corrupt than Edwin Edwards
of Louisiana. In fact, he is way more corrupt. Edwin Edwards took
$400,000. Well, in the Middle East, Donald Trump will cement deals
totaling in the billions in exchange for favorable treatment by the
U.S. Federal Government for these Gulf countries.
The key difference is that Donald Trump isn't hiding it like other
corrupt officials are. He is not ashamed. He is not doing it in secret.
His corruption is wildly public, and his hope is that by doing it
publicly, he can con the American people into thinking that it is not
corruption because he is not hiding it. But what he is doing, in
reality, is no different than any other corrupt public official who
does it in private other than the fact that Trump's corruption, his
foreign policy corruption, is just so much bigger in scope and the
impact it has on the American people than anything a corrupt mayor or a
corrupt Governor may have done.
Trump's first major foreign trip--and he just landed--is to Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, and UAE--not because these are our most important allies
in the world, not because these are the most important countries in the
world, not because he is going there to talk about making the Middle
East more safe and more secure--no. His first trip is to these three
countries because these are the three countries that have agreed to pay
Donald Trump money. Donald Trump is going to collect tribute, and it is
all just out in the open.
Frankly, it was pretty easy to see this coming.
Recent former Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have always very
seriously and studiously avoided even the appearance of a conflict of
interest. President Bush placed his assets into a qualified blind trust
where investment decisions were made without his knowledge or input.
Both Biden and Obama divested all of their assets except for cash and
mutual funds. They didn't enter into any new business ventures while in
the White House.
In contrast, Trump has refused to abide by these standard ethics
rules. His family runs his business, but nobody honestly believes that
the kids are really in charge. President Trump is still calling the
shots. His interests are not in a blind trust. He has made no pledge
that he won't do new deals, even with foreign entities, while he is in
office. In fact, he is doing deals seemingly every single week. He is
open for business, and every foreign government knows it. In fact, it
appears that right now, the Gulf States are trying to outdo each other
to up the price of buying an American President. And because Trump is
greedy and he is insecure, he wants to fit in with the billionaire
class, he is traveling the region with his hat out for further
solicitations.
So let's ask: What is the going rate right now for a Gulf country to
buy access to Donald Trump, to get favorable
[[Page S2873]]
treatment from the Federal Government?
For Qatar, we recently found out it is a $400 million luxury plane.
This plane has been opulently configured for royal use. It is not a
gift to the U.S. Government; it is a personal gift to the President.
The terms of the arrangement apparently include a stipulation that
after Trump leaves office, it will be transferred to Trump, to his
Presidential library, which means Trump gets the so-called floating
palace for himself.
This is outrageous. We have never seen anything like this before in
American history--a foreign government gifting a $400 million luxury
plane to the President of the United States.
This is spelled out as blatantly unconstitutional by our Founding
Fathers. They wrote into the Constitution a specific clause called the
emoluments clause, which prohibits Federal officeholders from accepting
gifts from any King, Prince, or foreign state without the consent of
Congress. Like, how much clearer could it be? It is unconstitutional.
It is illegal. The Founding Fathers knew it was evil to have Members of
Congress or the President of the United States accepting expensive
gifts from a foreign nation that, in exchange, wants favors from the
U.S. Government. Donald Trump's acceptance of the luxury plane from a
foreign monarch is basically the corruption that our Founding Fathers
were seeking to prevent.
But that is not all he is getting from Qatar. The Trump Organization
recently signed a $5.5 billion golf course and real estate deal with
DarGlobal and Qatari Diar, a firm established by Qatar's sovereign
wealth fund--$5.5 billion while Trump is in office.
It would have been unthinkable for any previous President to enter
into a $5.5 billion business deal with anybody--never mind a foreign
government--while they are in office, and it still should be
unthinkable.
Now, Qatar is a U.S. ally. It is a very important ally. But they are
a complicated country. They have their own interests, some of which
don't overlap with ours. A foreign government like Qatar should not
have a $5 billion chit hanging over the head of a sitting U.S.
President, and they should not be gifting him a $400 million plane.
That should kind of go without saying.
For Saudi Arabia, the price is also in the billions. Soon after
leaving the White House in Trump's first term, his son-in-law Jared
Kushner created a private equity firm and got a $2 billion investment
from Saudi Arabia. The board of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund
questioned whether this was smart, to invest that much money in a
totally unproven fund, but the Saudi Crown Prince himself overruled the
board, undoubtedly seeing the political advantage of investing directly
with the Trump family.
But this was only the beginning. The Trump family has put things into
overdrive during the second term. Within his first 3 weeks of office,
Trump convened a meeting at the White House with the head of the Saudi
sovereign wealth fund--not to discuss matters of state, but to
negotiate a deal between the PGA and the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour. Do
you want to know why? To try to bring PGA tournaments back to Trump
golf courses. Trump convened a meeting in the White House with the
Saudis in order to enrich himself.
In addition to the $5 billion Qatar real estate deal, the Trump
organization is also partnering with a Saudi firm on a $1 billion
Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai. The property's website--this
is, like, unbelievable. The property's website--this is a Trump-
financed property, along with a Saudi investment fund--offers free 10-
year ``golden visas'' to the United States, hinting at the opportunity
for investors in Trump's property to buy residency in the United States
and a pathway to citizenship. For the UAE, the price is somewhere north
of $2 billion. Last week, Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial
cofounder Zach Witkoff spoke at a conference in Dubai on crypto called
TOKEN2049.
As an aside here, it is just so fantastic and bone-chilling how
transparent these guys are in their use of public positions to enrich
themselves.
I am going to tell the story of Trump's stablecoin and the corruption
with the Emirates. Let's just pause for a second and consider the fact
that the Trump family could have partnered with anybody in the world on
their new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. But of all the
people in the world to partner with on this new crypto venture, they
chose the son of Trump's Middle East envoy--Trump's Middle East envoy,
the guy who is making all decisions on U.S. policy in the Middle East--
just to make it crystal clear to the Gulf countries that when they deal
with World Liberty Financial, Trump's crypto venture, that they are
dealing directly with the people responsible for making the U.S. policy
in the Middle East.
It is just stunning. Literally, the sons of the President and the
sons of the Middle East envoy are running a crypto venture and then
going directly into the Middle East in order to find their first
investment. And guess what? Miracle--they found it.
MGX, an investment firm backed by the Emirati Government, at this
conference announced that they had looked at all the crypto companies
in the world that they could partner with to invest $2 billion in the
crypto exchange finance, and they selected--wait for it, drum roll--the
company run by the sons of the President of the United States and the
U.S. Middle East envoy--$2 billion.
World Liberty's role in this transaction is not that complicated. It
is kind of similar to a bank. MGX, this Emirati firm, deposits $2
billion with the firm and, in return, receives the stablecoin to be
used on these crypto exchanges. The firm holds onto these dollars,
invests them, and keeps the profits for themselves. So the Trump-
Witkoff company just gets, basically, a gift of capital. And if they
just use that $2 billion to invest in Treasury bonds, it would profit
around $85 million a year from these investments alone. And the money
goes directly to Trump--just directly to Trump. It is literally not
complicated--Emirates, World Liberty Financial, Donald Trump.
This isn't 1990s Louisiana. Nobody is hiding it. On World Liberty's
website, they say an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump owns 60
percent of the equity in the company. Because of this deal, Trump and
Witkoff can further capitalize because Trump's stablecoin just became
the fifth most valuable stablecoin in the world because of the Emirati
investment.
If the plane and the real estate deals and the private equity fund
investment and the stablecoin weren't enough for you, Trump has found
one last way for Gulf money to flow seamlessly into his pocket. It is
called the Trump meme coin. What is the business model here? Trump gets
a huge payment whenever he releases a batch of these meme coins, which,
by the way, have no underlying value other than just the demands people
have for Trump's coin. And each time a Trump coin is bought or sold, a
small fee is routed directly to the company owned by Trump. According
to one analysis, nearly $325 million in fees have been accrued since
the coin was launched in January. In just 3 months, 4 months, 4\1/2\
half months--$325 million worth of fees.
Trump hides the buyers of the coin. In this way, the meme coin is
kind of a little like the Louisiana corruption. But we know that the
majority of the buyers aren't Americans who want to help Trump make
this Nation great again. The majority of the buyers of Trump coin are
superrich foreigners--princes, oligarchs, authoritarians--who are
buying the coin in order to get in good with Trump or to get something
in exchange.
One great thing about buying the coin is that you get access to Trump
in the White House. Again, they are not hiding this. Two weeks ago,
Trump announced he would host a private dinner at the White House with
seats reserved exclusively for the top 220 Trump coin holders. In 2
days since the announcement, Trump's company made $900,000 in fees
because everybody--mostly foreigners, many of them probably in the
Gulf--were buying up the coin as quickly as they could in order to get
one of these seats.
If a mayor of a small town was selling meetings at city hall for
$1,000, he would be run out of town on a rail. But that is exactly what
Donald Trump is doing in the Middle East and all over the world as
foreign buyers line up to buy the meme coin, guaranteed private access
to Donald Trump at the White House.
[[Page S2874]]
You cannot make this up. The obvious question for the average
American is, OK, what does this mean for me? Like, somebody living in
New Britain, CT, might think it is kind of gross that Trump is lining
his pockets as President, but they want to know, how does this actually
affect me?
Well, the most simple way to think about this is, if the guy you
elected to protect us and make our lives better is spending most of his
time alternating between playing golf and cutting deals for himself, he
is not protecting you. He is not spending any time trying to lower
costs or defeat our enemies. Corruption can be a full-time job for
Donald Trump, and that is a pretty lousy deal for the American people.
More importantly, when our foreign policy is for sale, we are less
safe.
Let me give you an example relative to the trip that Donald Trump is
on right now. These countries aren't padding Donald Trump's pockets
because they like him. They are paying him in order to get things from
the Federal Government--from the U.S. Government--without having to
make any actual policy concessions that would benefit the U.S. people.
Before anybody could begin to process the brazen corruption of the
UAE-Trump-Witkoff crypto deal, reports very quickly emerged that the
Trump administration was considering changing regulations to make it
easier for the country of UAE to purchase highly advanced
semiconductors from U.S. manufacturers. This was a huge priority of the
Emirates. But the restrictions are on the UAE for a reason. The UAE has
a very troubling and very close security relationship with China. And
so the reason why we didn't allow U.S. companies to sell semiconductors
directly to the UAE is because we believe it would very easily become a
conduit to China getting their hands on these advanced semiconductors
and being able to leapfrog the United States in the business of
advanced AI.
But all of a sudden, once the cash payment to Trump through the
crypto venture was announced, Trump signaled he was willing to throw
our security concerns out the window and transfer this sensitive
technology to the UAE, even though it is likely China will get their
hands on this technology, allowing China to put themselves in a
position to leapfrog us in the race for advanced AI. That would be a
disaster for the American people. But that is what is happening. We
might hand AI leadership to China because that is the price of Trump
getting paid. As long as he gets paid, he doesn't seem to care about
the impact on regular Americans.
The White House is open for business and the Trump family is proudly
advertising to the world where to send the check. They aren't trying to
hide it--a $400 million luxury plane gifted to the President of the
United States right as he is going over to negotiate potentially
sensitive security arrangements with the Gulf countries.
Every American, every Republican, every supposed national security
advocate in the Senate should be outraged by this. We could look the
other way, or we could show together, Republicans and Democrats, to
stand up for this country and do something about it.
I have joined with Senators Schatz and Coons and Booker to introduce
a resolution condemning the acceptance of the plane. It is a blatant
violation of the Emoluments Clause. We could stand together as a Senate
to vote for that resolution.
I introduced legislation to make it illegal for Presidents or Members
of Congress and their family members to profit off crypto coins while
they hold Federal office. We could join together in that effort.
I will personally seek to block any arms sale that is announced as
part of this trip with a country that is personally investing in Donald
Trump and his family. I will force a full Senate debate and a vote on
these sales.
Foreign leaders need to know that there will be a price for
participating in the corruption of the American Presidency. This level
of corruption is so gross that even Trump's most hardened MAGA
sycophants are turning against him. I didn't think I would see the day,
but people like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer who fawn over Trump, can't
believe he is so crass as to think it is OK to accept planes as a gift
in exchange for U.S. national security concessions.
This isn't ``America First.'' This is not what he promised the
American people. This is Trump first. He is willing to put our Nation's
security at risk, take unconstitutional bribes, just so he can fly
himself and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies around the world in gold-plated
luxury planes gifted to him by foreign governments--all while at the
same time he tells Americans they should be OK buying fewer school
supplies for their kids or fewer birthday presents for their
grandchildren because he is driving prices up for nonbillionaires in
this country--all while at the same time he is kicking 13 million
people off of their healthcare.
Trump lines his pockets, he corrupts our foreign policy to enrich
himself, while driving up prices and stealing healthcare from average
Americans. It is a national security disaster, and it is a moral
abomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sheehy). The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
scheduled rollcall vote begin now.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.