World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Trump family’s crypto business, is facing two separate lawsuits as questions build around UAE-linked transactions, the rollout of its stablecoin USD1, and the limits of current regulatory review.
On Oct. 22, Circle shareholder J. Benjamin Greenberg filed a federal lawsuit in Circle’s name against U.S. President Donald Trump, WLFI, and related parties. The complaint argues that two transactions involving Abu Dhabi-linked entities violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and damaged Circle’s commercial interests.
The two transactions at issue are a January 2025 equity deal in which Abu Dhabi entity Aryam Investment 1 agreed to buy a 49% stake in WLFI for $500 million, and MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance, which was settled in USD1, a stablecoin issued by WLFI. The plaintiff is seeking recovery of related gains, disclosure of other foreign crypto payments allegedly received by Trump, and damages.
Circle has distanced itself from the case, saying the lawsuit was brought by an individual shareholder and that the company did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in it. WLFI said the suit is baseless. The report also notes that winning an institutional order for USD1 does not by itself prove that Circle would otherwise have won that business, meaning commercial harm and causation would still need to be established in court.
Two transactions sit at the center of the complaint
The first challenged transaction is an equity purchase. In January 2025, days before Trump took office, Abu Dhabi entity Aryam Investment 1 signed an agreement to acquire 49% of WLFI for $500 million. The report says the entity is tied to UAE national security adviser Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the initial payment was $250 million. Of that amount, about $187 million went to Trump family entities, while at least $31 million went to entities linked to the family of Steve Witkoff. The agreement was signed by Eric Trump. The report says WLFI had not yet launched a product at the time.
The second transaction concerns stablecoin settlement. MGX, the Abu Dhabi fund chaired by Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, announced a $2 billion investment in Binance in March. On May 1, Eric Trump publicly said the investment was settled in USD1. The complaint treats that $2 billion USD1-settled investment as one of the relevant transactions.
Binance CEO Richard Teng had previously said the decision to use USD1 was made by MGX and that Binance did not provide preferential treatment.
Circle and WLFI have taken sharply different positions
Greenberg filed the case in federal court in Circle’s name. In addition to Trump and WLFI, the defendants include WLFI’s holding company and U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The competitive theory in the complaint is that WLFI used foreign capital to scale USD1 and take business that otherwise would have gone to Circle.
Circle rejected any suggestion that it was behind the case. The company said the lawsuit was filed by an individual shareholder and that it did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the action.
WLFI responded in blunt terms. A spokesperson said the lawsuit was 「毫无依据」, or "baseless," and said the company complies with all U.S. laws and that no one at WLFI holds a position in the U.S. government. Its lawyer described the filing as a "partisan press release" that "does not hold up." WLFI has also said Trump did not participate in the equity transaction and currently has no role in the project.
The report adds that Greenberg is said to be a former Circle software engineer who holds about 10,000 shares.
Standing is likely to be the first hurdle
The report places the case in the context of earlier Foreign Emoluments Clause litigation. Starting in 2017, lawsuits tied to Trump’s hotel business were brought by ethics watchdog groups in Washington, the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, and nearly 200 Democratic lawmakers.
Many of those cases ran into the same threshold issue: whether the plaintiffs had suffered a concrete injury and therefore had standing to sue. Some courts found standing, only to be reversed on appeal.
This time, the plaintiff is a small shareholder in a competitor, and the theory is different. Instead of claiming public harm, the case claims commercial injury. But Circle, the company on whose behalf the claim was filed, has already publicly separated itself from the suit. Whether a judge accepts that path is the first major question in the case.
Justin Sun has brought a separate case against WLFI
WLFI is also dealing with another lawsuit filed by TRON founder Justin Sun in April 2026 in federal court in California.
According to Reuters, Sun’s complaint says he invested $45 million in WLFI. He alleges that in September 2025, WLFI blacklisted wallets holding more than 500 million of his tokens. He also claims WLFI pressured him to issue and promote USD1 on TRON and retaliated after he refused.
WLFI has denied those allegations. Steve Witkoff publicly responded by saying the lawsuit was an attempt by Sun to divert attention from his own alleged misconduct.
The report also says Sun recently described the dispute in a conversation with Jin Ming as a matter of business, saying he still supports Trump’s crypto policy and AI strategy, remains heavily invested in U.S. equities, and sees the lawsuit as investor rights protection. He also said that even if the amount involved under the agreement was calculated at $400 million to $500 million, it would not materially affect his overall assets.
The two lawsuits are not built on the same claims. Sun’s case focuses on governance and token freezing, while the Circle shareholder suit focuses on the source of funds. Still, both complaints touch the same issue: how USD1 reached large pools of capital and major platforms. One says pressure was applied to promote USD1 on TRON. The other points to the $2 billion settlement routed through Binance.
OCC has given preliminary conditional approval to a charter application
On the regulatory side, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) gave preliminary conditional approval on Aug. 14 to the national trust bank charter application of World Liberty Trust Company. The company still needs to satisfy the stated conditions and complete pre-opening regulatory procedures before it can receive final approval.
The report says this type of trust bank generally cannot take deposits or make loans in the same way a commercial bank can. If final approval is granted, the entity would take over issuance and reserve custody for USD1 from BitGo. Circle had previously received preliminary conditional approval for a similar charter application.
During the review, the OCC received comments raising conflict-of-interest concerns tied to UAE investors, the Trump family, and the Foreign Emoluments Clause. The approval letter said those foreign investors were not principal shareholders of the bank and that several investors had provided passivity commitments, pledging not to seek control over or influence the bank’s operations and decision-making. Eric Trump signed on behalf of one investment entity.
The OCC said concerns related to conflicts of interest and the Foreign Emoluments Clause were outside the scope of the charter review, and it also noted that WLFI itself was not the applicant. The review did not determine whether the clause had been violated.
Congressional review requests remain unresolved
The report says one of Circle’s past competitive advantages was regulatory positioning, including earlier approvals. After WLFI received preliminary conditional approval, that gap narrowed at the licensing level. Greenberg’s complaint, however, lists the approval as one of the government decisions that could benefit the Trump family and extends the dispute to the relationship between foreign capital and the family’s business interests.
In February, two Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee wrote to the Treasury secretary asking whether the transaction in which UAE-linked investors spent $500 million to acquire about 49% of WLFI should be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) on national security grounds, and to conduct such a review if applicable. Democratic lawmakers in the House also pushed for an investigation into the equity deal.
For now, the court still has to decide whether Greenberg has standing. The OCC has already excluded Foreign Emoluments Clause questions from the scope of its charter review. And the requests from Democratic lawmakers in Congress for investigations and CFIUS review have not yet produced a conclusion.