“FOUNDATION FUTURE INDUSTRIES RECEIVES $24 MILLION PENTAGON CONTRACT” was the ticker on Fox Business Network Thursday morning. Host Maria Bartiromo introduced her segment by explaining that the defense technology startup is developing “autonomous humanoid robots” to help soldiers “to overcome enemy positions more safely.”
Bartiromo’s guest? Eric Trump, Chief Strategy Adviser at Foundation Future Industries – and son of the man who leads the government that awarded the eight-figure contract. The moderator congratulated Trump and Foundation Future founder Sankaet Pathat – also a guest – on this lucrative deal. Not a word about the obvious conflict of interest when the president’s administration funnels millions of taxpayer dollars into its own family through federal contracts. The sum that Foundation Future receives is little more than a drop in the sea of wealth that the Trump family has amassed over the past 18 months by shamelessly exploiting their patriarch’s position. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that she would have to hide.
Trump – also introduced during the show as executive vice president of the Trump Organization – told Bartiromo he sees “limitless uses” for the robots and mentioned some of his family’s other businesses: hospitality, golf and crypto, to name a few.
The family also collects money
The president has reportedly increased his net worth by billions since returning to the White House – but nearly every member of his immediate family, even extended family, is putting money into their own pockets. They seem to care very little about the possible ethical or legal boundaries that they trample down in the process. A quick overview:
Donald Trump Jr.
The US president’s eldest son runs the Trump Organization alongside his younger brother Eric, while his father handles government business with countries where the company operates or plans to operate. Jimmy Carter famously transferred his peanut farm into an independent trust – Trump, on the other hand, keeps the Trump Organization in his possession while his sons take over the helm.
Trump Jr. plays a key role in his father’s empire: He sits on the board of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, and is a founding partner of World Liberty Financial (WLF), a financial and crypto company majority owned by the Trump family. Its co-founders include brother Eric and Alex and Zach Witkoff, the sons of real estate developer Steve Witkoff, whom Trump appointed as his special envoy to the Middle East and de facto conflict envoy.
The fund has quickly established itself as a vehicle for shady foreign dealings: a deal was struck with Emirati Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is working towards a deal with the US on advanced AI chips and is seeking Trump’s support to protect the UAE from International Court of Justice sanctions. Tahnoon was courted in the White House, and his deal with the Trump sons included a $500 million investment as well as a $2 billion partnership between WLF and international crypto exchange Binance – which is banned in the US after it was accused of violating money laundering laws. TRON blockchain creator Justin Sun (who, tellingly, had the SEC investigation dropped) and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (who, tellingly, received a presidential pardon) also joined WLF.
Crypto and more crypto
WLF is not the Trump children’s only crypto project. In 2025, Trump Jr. and Eric Trump founded American Bitcoin, increasing Junior’s net worth by up to $80 million, according to Forbes. The Trump administration is extremely accommodating to the demands and lobbying of large crypto companies: President Trump regularly declares that he wants to make the USA the “crypto capital of the world”, takes an extremely lax regulatory course for the controversial financial system, has launched his own meme coin and torpedoed regulatory efforts by authorities such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission – while his family is building a crypto empire.
As TMTG Director, he oversees a partnership with Crypto.com to bring an in-platform prediction market to Truth Social. At the same time, he sits on the advisory board of Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration has been reluctant to regulate prediction markets and has undermined efforts by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to clamp down on rampant insider trading on the platform.
Trump Jr. is also a board member at PSQ Holdings, an anti-woke financial technology company, and an advisor to publicly traded investment and acquisition firm New America Acquisition I Corp., which, according to its website, “seeks mergers with high-growth U.S. companies that are leaders in areas such as automation, data infrastructure and energy modernization.”
Assets increased tenfold
Forbes estimates that Donald Trump Junior’s net worth has increased from around $30 million to $300 million.
Eric Trump
He may be the second-born son, but he leaves all his siblings behind in terms of accumulated wealth: Forbes estimates that his net worth has increased tenfold to $400 million since his father’s re-election.
Eric Trump has partnered with his brother in numerous business ventures – including his role as executive vice president of the Trump Organization and founder of World Liberty Financial and American Bitcoin.
His independent businesses are among the most brazen examples of nepotism of Trump’s second term so far. Earlier this month, he announced that Foundation Future Industries — a defense robotics company on whose board he sits and advises — had won a $24 million contract from the Department of Defense. That raises immediate questions about a conflict of interest between the federal government and the president’s family.
Eric Trump is largely responsible for the rapid growth of the Trump family’s hotel business – particularly in the Middle East and in countries seeking the president’s favor. The Trump Organization announced construction of a luxury high-rise in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, less than a month after Trump’s 2024 election victory; A luxury golf course and residential complex is being built in Muscat, Oman. The Trump Organization’s Coming Soon page lists commercial, residential, hotel and golf projects in India, the United Arab Emirates, Romania, Indonesia, the Maldives and Georgia.
President Trump has maintained close ties with Saudi Arabia since his first term in office – he downplayed the murder of Washington Post journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi, which was allegedly carried out on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The president considers the kingdom one of his most important geopolitical allies and welcomed Bin Salman to the Oval Office in November, where he praised the crown prince and the hundreds of billions of dollars Saudi Arabia is investing in the U.S. at the same time that the Trump family is building businesses there.
Travel and deals
Eric Trump is scheduled to accompany his father on a diplomatic trip to China next month, and concerns are already being raised that the president’s son will soon announce another lucrative deal struck on the back of the presidency.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
Ivanka Trump may have tried to make herself invisible after her father’s first term, but her husband is everywhere.
Jared Kushner, son of disgraced New York real estate mogul Charles Kushner and son-in-law of the president, leads a lot of peace negotiations in the Middle East – and collects a lot of checks from the parties involved.
Kushner’s Miami-based investment firm Affinity Partners has become the go-to source for massive investments from global players, even as Kushner serves as an unofficial negotiator in diplomatic talks on the Iran war. In 2024, his firm received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and now manages over $4.8 billion in foreign funds.
He reportedly pocketed over $100 million in administrative fees from the Saudis, who allegedly supported Trump’s entry into the war. While he is pushing Trump’s Gaza “development plan” and acting as a key negotiator in Pakistan-brokered talks aimed at ending the war launched by his father-in-law, Affinity Partners is also courting more than $5 billion in additional investment, mostly from the Middle East.
Focus on conflicts of interest
The most important partner in the deal is Saudi Arabia. In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles last month, ranking members of the House Oversight Committee and Senate Finance Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), expressed concern that Kushner “may be subject to conflicts of interest that could endanger the security of the American people.”
Ivanka Trump is a partner in her husband’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, but seems determined to stay out of her father’s spotlight.
Tiffany Trump and Michael Boulos
Tiffany Trump has always stayed on the fringes of the family empire – but that doesn’t mean she and her husband Michael Boulos are left empty-handed in Trump 2.0. Boulos, son of the Lebanese transport entrepreneur and diplomat Massad Boulos, married Tiffany Trump in 2022 – and then suddenly became more successful. Boulos collected a commission from selling a superyacht to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump while working for his cousin, a yacht broker. Later reports revealed that the yacht had not been completed, amid allegations that the brokerage firm had defrauded Kushner of several million dollars and attempted to conceal the ship’s true value.
Boulos is currently under investigation by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee for allegedly charging a Saudi businessman $100,000 for an introduction and photos with Trump at his own wedding to Tiffany.
Boulos’ father currently serves as a senior adviser for Arab and Middle Eastern affairs to Trump, raising concerns that the younger Boulos’ business could be used to gain access to diplomatic channels.
Melania Trump
Melania Trump made headlines last year when Amazon announced it would pay a whopping $40 million for the rights to an authorized documentary about Trump – which many saw as part of Jeff Bezos’ effort to curry favor with the president after his re-election. The Amazon billionaire dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the 2024 election victory, donated to the inauguration fund and announced that his newspaper, The Washington Post – long a target in Trump’s campaign against the free press – would focus its editorial direction on “free markets and personal freedoms.”
Melania Trump promoted her documentary while hosting freed Israeli hostages at the White House in February.
Barron Trump
Trump’s youngest child – just 20 years old – has an estimated fortune of $150 million at the end of 2025. Most of that value comes from his investment stake in World Liberty Financial, the financial firm run by his two older half-brothers. Barron also holds a significant stake in World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, USD1, which has a total market cap of $2.6 billion.
