Five senior Senate Democrats sent a formal letter to Republican committee chairs Tuesday demanding immediate hearings into a reported $500 million transaction in which Abu Dhabi royalty acquired a stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm tied to President Donald Trump, and into the federal policy decisions that followed.
The letter states that lieutenants to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser, secretly purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial four days before Trump's January 2025 inauguration, with $218 million paid upfront to entities tied to the families of the president and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The senators call the arrangement "unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president's company."
Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Gary Peters, Dick Durbin, and Ron Wyden told Republican committee chairs to "immediately hold hearings" and compel Trump administration officials to testify under oath about what they knew and when.
The lawmakers listed the events they say need scrutiny. Within months of the WLFI stake purchase, the Trump administration approved $1.4 billion in arms sales to the UAE, authorized the sale of 35,000 advanced AI chips to UAE firm G42 despite national security objections, and disbanded the Justice Department's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. UAE-backed MGX also acquired a stake in TikTok, despite Trump's stated preference for American ownership.
