Appeared on Substack, October 19, 2025
https://anandanandalingam649613.substack.com/p/epstein-files-are-a-distraction-from?r=o7w77
For the past couple of months, both the media and the Democratic congressmen have been pounding on the Epstein Files. Several high-level people in the Trump administration have been in the middle of the back-and-forth with congress on whether and when the Files will be released, the contents of the file, whether Trump is implicated or not, and so on. The mainstream media has lapped this up. Not a day goes by without commentators in CNN and MSNBC making very sanctimonious speeches about openness, public’s right to know, First Amendment rights, and the opaqueness of the Trump administration, and the possible complicity of these high-level Trump appointees in protecting the President to the detriment of the country. I think this is all theater to distract the country and the voters from financial shenanigans of Donald Trump and his inner circle.
It is my conjecture that the Epstein Files will not harm President Trump politically very much, if at all. Let us not forget that, before his first Presidential run in 2016, more than two dozen women accused Trump of various forms of unwanted sexual behavior — such as groping, kissing without consent, walking into dressing rooms, etc. More recently, E. Jean Carroll sued Trump in court of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman department‐store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages, and later $83.3 million for defamation over statements he made about the first verdict.
There was also this infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump is heard boasting about kissing or grabbing women without consent. Also let us not forget that Trump was “outed” by The Wall Street Journal about having sex with a prostitute Stormy Daniels when his wife Melania was pregnant with their son. In this case, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of using fraudulent financial statements to cover up the payments made to silence her. Trump has consistently denied all serious allegations (rape, sexual assault) and in many cases has labeled them false, politically motivated, or made up. In any case his voters either did not care, did not believe the accusers, or simply gave him a pass. In fact, in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Donald Trump got 63 million, 74 million and 77 million votes respectively, winning the Presidency two times, the last one with a plurality of the votes. It is not that the voters do not know the depravity of Donald Trump – that attribute alone does not make them turn away from him.
If I were to speculate, after this Jeffrey Epstein File circus is over, especially when the files are released with little or no redaction, I do not expect to find a “smoking gun” implicating Donald Trump. From his past sexual dalliances, including those not consummated, under-aged small girls may not have been Trump’s cup of tea. The hysterical coverage of the Epstein Files is detracting congress and the media, with a few exceptions, from focusing on a greater damage to the country. President Trump is simply compromising the Presidency for enormous financial gains worldwide for the family. There certainly have been reports in several mainstream media like the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal about the extremely large amount of money Trump and his sons are making in crypto currency from the very first day of the Presidency. However, this coverage of the Trump finances is like the clouds in a California sky; appears suddenly out of the blue and just as quickly disappears.
World Liberty Financial was founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump in late 2024. It offers a stablecoin (USD1), pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by U.S. government treasuries, dollar deposits, and other cash equivalents. WLF also issued a token called $WLFI, which began publicly trading. The Trump family owns a large portion of the project (~60% of the holding company, plus a large number of WLFI tokens). They make money from token sales, from holding tokens that appreciate in value (once trading begins or when they are unlocked), and revenue from the protocol of the token (fees, etc.). According to reports, about $550 million in $WLFI token sales have taken place, of which roughly $390 million is estimated to have gone to the Trump family. The paper/locked stake is widely reported to be around $5 billion.
It does not take an economist to know that the policies of the U.S. government will affect the dollar exchange rate which in turn will affect the value of stable coin, USD1, floated by WLF. There is clearly a conflict of interest here. Trump’s wholesale increase of import tariffs should have resulted in the U.S. dollar going up; this would have increased the value of USD1. So, the question is whether these tariffs are a true policy instrument to reduce deficits with other countries and give an incentive to domestic manufacturing or is it a way to enhance the valuation of the crypto business under WLF. Unfortunately for Trump’s crypto business, the economic retaliation of other countries and the reduction in confidence in the U.S. economy has led to the dollar getting devalued against most currencies, and has had a negative impact on USD1. Perhaps this tariff ploy did not work so well, but it is something to keep an eye on vis-à-vis financial gain for the Trump family.
$TRUMP Meme Coin was launched in January 2025 on Solana. A fixed supply was created (1 billion coins) with 200 million put into public circulation and 800 million held by Trump‐owned entities. Revenue comes from initial sales, trading volume, transaction/fee structures, and from holding a large portion of the coin (which can grow in value). One report says the meme coin generated at least $350 million in sales & fees. The day after Trump’s inauguration, the value of $TRUMP was ~$44 making the family holding worth $35 billion! Of course, the value dropped soon after. In May 2025, potential investors were told that if they would buy the $TRUMP meme coin they would secure a dinner invitation with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Investors spent about $140 million to snap up the $TRUMP coins and the asset’s value almost doubled to about $15; it is back to trading at ~ $7 in mid-October. The news media reported that there were concerns from government watchdogs and some Democratic lawmakers that the Trump-branded asset was being linked to gain access to the president. Such a mild reaction compared to what is going on with the Epstein Files is quite shocking; there needs to be more accountability.
The Trump family has 20% ownership in American Bitcoin, a crypto mining company; the Canadian mining company Hut 8 owns 80%. American Bitcoin runs mining facilities, accumulates Bitcoin through mining and market purchases, and have contracts for mining hardware. Mining operations generate revenue directly via the Bitcoin they produce, and possibly via holding it. The Trump sons’ stake in the bitcoin-mining company was reported as worth roughly $1.5 billion at its public debut. American Bitcoin is headquartered in Miami, Florida, and it operates mining facilities in various locations, including Niagara Falls, Medicine Hat, Alberta, and Orla, Texas. In all cases, the question is whether the company received favorable real estate and energy subsidies just because of the connection to Donald Trump. Influence peddling seems to be widely practiced in congress by both parties, but the Trump family financial shenanigans have hit a new high.
The Trump family’s crypto activities have close connections to the leaders of the Arab world. According to public reporting, the large UAE-linked Aqua1 Foundation has bought $100M of WLFI tokens. Abu Dhabi-connected MGX (and other Abu Dhabi interests) are reported to have used USD1 in a $2 billion transaction tied to Binance and to be among the biggest institutional backers of the sale of TikTok to US investors. It seems that the sale of TikTok engineered by Trump might end up helping the crypto business of Trump and his sons. There are rumors that Saudi and Qatari sovereign‐wealth have invested in the Trump family ventures, WLFI, USD1 and $TRUMP, although there does not seem to be public evidence of this. Of course, Saudi/Qatari business ties to the Trump family do exist in real estate and resort deals, and the suspicion is well warranted. There are new rumors about other sovereign funds (eg, Norges, Temasek, GIC, etc.) being connected to the Trump cryptocurrency empire, but no public evidence of this. Congressional Democrats and some Senators have publicly called for probes and ethics reviews focused on foreign money in WLFI and related deals. However, the Epstein Files are dominating the airwaves much more than the probes of potential financial shenanigans.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, his daughter certainly took advantage of Trump’s first term as President to enrich themselves. Nothing seems illegal about this of course; relations of Democratic leaders have enriched themselves in the past. The “poster boy” case in point is Nancy Pelosi’s husband who has been accused by the Republicans of prospering through congressional insider information. Kushner founded Affinity Partners in 2021. According to a search via ChatGPT, at the of end‐2024, assets under management at AUM were ~$4.8 billion. This growth was partly fueled by significant funding from Middle East sovereign wealth sources. Saudi Arabia reportedly invested $2 billion in Affinity Partners. An additional $1.5 billion of new capital in 2024 came from Abu Dhabi‐based firm “Lunate” and Qatar’s sovereign fund. So, a large fraction of Kushner’s business (at least in Affinity Partners) is tied to the Middle East by way of capital commitment. No wonder President Trump is a big hit among the leaders of the Arab nations in the middle east. The question is whether foreign policy is being compromised by this. The most recent announcement by the government that the Qataris would have their own air force facility in Idaho, not to mention the Boeing 777 gift to Trump gives one pause.
Most recently there was a “hot mike” moment between President Donald Trump and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto at the Gaza summit in Egypt. The two appeared to be talking business as Subianto asked Donald Trump to meet his son Eric, who is the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. The press thinks this was about a couple of construction projects in Indonesia. These projects are old news. The need to connect Eric Trump and President Subianto could well have been about the new crypto currency business of the Trump family.
As I write this blog, an agreement had been reached for Israel to stop the massive bombing of Gaza (called a “ceasefire” by the mainstream media) and for the exchange of hostages from each side to the other. There has also been a plan for maintaining peace in Gaza architected by many different middle eastern countries including Turkey and Egypt. At the center has been Tony Blair, the former prime Minister of the U.K. who, apparently relied on Jared Kushner to be the go between the heads of the different countries. Let us not forget the inflammatory remarks made by Kushner, just about a year ago about how to rebuild Gaza. According to New York-based commentator Ryan Rozbiani, Kushner remarked at Harvard University on February 15, 2024, “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable if people would focus on kind of building up livelihoods…I think that it’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” Given Donald Trump’s penchant to actually follow through on plans, controversial or otherwise, international law be damned, it is quite possible that the real estate activities of Jared Kushner and his family will be front and center in the rebuilding of Gaza. Once this project starts with the sponsorship of the United States government, it will be difficult to stop it without appearing mean spirited. It is important for congress and the mainstream media to get in front of this likely scenario.
Then there is the gossip floating around the dinner circuit from Washington DC to Austin, TX to San Francisco and many places in between about Trump’s flip flop on specific tariffs. Traders have reportedly come up with the acronym TACO, which stands for “Trump always chickens out,” on the president’s habit of threatening to impose tariffs on countries and then backing off at the last moment. The mainstream media thinks that this simply reflects Trump’s cluelessness when it comes to economic policy and trade relations. Just during the three days, October 10-12, Trump threatened China with 100% tariffs and the Dow Jones plunged by close to 2%. Then Trump sent a social media post over the weekend saying that Xi was playing ball, and the Dow jumped by close to 1%. Paul Krugman attributes this change of mind do the severe negative impact on Trump’s crypto currencies because of the initial China tariff pronouncement. However, these gyrations by Trump on the tariffs and the subsequent impact on the stock market has been going on for a long time, and anyone who had inside information on what he will pronounce about tariffs could have made a lot of money. This includes his inner circle of cabinet ministers and advisors, and the Trump family itself. Scott Galloway in his different newsletters and podcasts frequently raises the question as to whether there is market manipulations based on Trump’s tariff pronouncements. Should this not be part of a serious investigation by congress and an expose by the mainstream media?
At the end of Trump’s Presidency, all the loyal foot soldiers who obfuscated congress and the press in the Epstein Files episode would have sullied their reputation and would become footnotes in history. Donald Trump and his family will be laughing all the way to the bank.
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