This summer, Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, paid a visit to the coast of Sardinia, a stretch of the Mediterranean Sea crowded with super yachts.
On one of those extravagant vessels, Mr. Witkoff sat down with a member of the ultrarich ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. He was meeting Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a trim figure in dark glasses who controls $1.5 trillion of the Emiratis’ sovereign wealth.
It was the latest engagement in a consequential alliance.
Over the past few months, Mr. Witkoff and Sheikh Tahnoon had become both diplomatic allies and business partners, testing the limits of ethics rules while enriching the president, his family and his inner circle, according to an investigation by The New York Times.
At the heart of their relationship are two multibillion-dollar deals. One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically.
While there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary. Taken together, they blurred the lines between personal and government business and raised questions about whether U.S. interests were served.
In May, Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach announced the first of the deals at a conference in Dubai. One of Sheikh Tahnoon’s investment firms would deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Witkoffs and Trumps.
Two weeks later, the White House agreed to allow the U.A.E. access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence. Many of the chips would go to G42, a sprawling technology firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, despite national security concerns that the chips could be shared with China.
Those negotiations involved another key White House official with ties to the tech industry and to the Middle East: David Sacks. A longtime venture capitalist, Mr. Sacks serves as the administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, a newly created position that has allowed him to shape tech policy even as he continues to work in Silicon Valley.
The Times found that the agreements were intertwined in ways that have not been previously reported and that they provoked concerns about conflicts of interest even from staff members in the Trump administration.
The Times reviewed correspondence and interviewed more than 75 people, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters, to reveal new details that show how the deals got done:
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Steve Witkoff advocated to give the Emirates access to the chips at the same time that his and Mr. Trump’s family business was landing the crypto investment, despite an ethics rule intended to prohibit officials from participating in matters that could benefit themselves or their relatives.
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Mr. Sacks was a key figure in the chip negotiations, raising alarm from some Trump administration officials who believed that it was improper for a working venture capitalist to help broker deals that could benefit his industry and investors in his company. He received a White House ethics waiver allowing him to participate.
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A senior executive based in the U.A.E. worked simultaneously for World Liberty and Sheikh Tahnoon’s G42, creating a link between the two companies as the Emiratis were pushing to gain access to A.I. chips.
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Some Trump administration officials tried to limit the chips deal, but an unexpected intervention by the conservative agitator Laura Loomer changed the power dynamic within the White House in the U.A.E.’s favor.
Representatives for the White House and World Liberty both denied any connection between the two deals, with an administration spokeswoman calling the crypto transaction “totally unrelated to any government business.”
World Liberty said in May that Mr. Witkoff was fully divesting from the company. A disclosure document made public on Saturday showed that, as of August, he still had a financial interest in the firm, though it did not reveal the value. The White House spokeswoman said in a statement that Mr. Witkoff was “still in the process of divesting.”
Asked whether Mr. Witkoff violated federal ethics rules, the spokeswoman responded that Mr. Witkoff was “working with ethics officials and counsel to ensure he is in full compliance.”
The White House statement also said that Mr. Sacks had acted appropriately. “Mr. Sacks has no financial interest in the U.A.E. chip deal,” the statement said.
And a spokesman for G42 said the company was “grounded in integrity” and committed to safeguards, auditing, and coordination with the Americans to ensure that U.S. technology does not get into the wrong hands.
Already the two deals have been transformative.
The first instantly propelled World Liberty into one of the world’s most prominent crypto companies, giving it a revenue stream that could be worth tens of millions of dollars annually.
The second is still pending, with final details under discussion in the White House. But it is poised to be a monumental victory for the Emirates. The Trump administration agreed to exponentially increase the U.A.E.’s access to one of the most important inventions in modern history.
The back-to-back deals violate longstanding norms in the United States for political, diplomatic and private deal-making among senior officials and their children, according to three ethics lawyers interviewed by The Times. And they have generated alarm among some former government officials.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you want to be making national security decisions in the American interest — not the commercial interests of the people involved,” said Brad Carson, a former Army under secretary who runs a bipartisan nonprofit that advises the government on A.I.
In the middle of both deals was Mr. Trump, a president who has used his power to enrich himself in ways that have little modern precedent, at least in the United States. It is more reminiscent of business customs in the Persian Gulf, where moneymaking and governance are blended in the hands of the ruling families.
“We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the Emirates’ book,” Zach Witkoff said at the Dubai conference. “They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.”
A Blurring of Lines
Sheikh Tahnoon, 56, has long had an air of mystery. Because of an eye condition, he is rarely seen without a pair of shades, even when meeting with world leaders.
For years, Sheikh Tahnoon has served as the U.A.E.’s national security adviser, surrounding himself with comrades who include a British ex-spy and the former prime minister of Lebanon. He became embroiled in a spying scandal in 2019, when it emerged that operatives hired by the Emirates were targeting human rights activists including Ahmed Mansoor, whose baby monitor they hacked to spy on his family.
By 2023, Sheikh Tahnoon had also taken on a new role, as the key orchestrator behind the royal family’s sovereign wealth. With more than $1 trillion of government money at his disposal, Sheikh Tahnoon was intent on turning his tiny oil-rich nation into a technological powerhouse.
The riches financed G42, a sprawling enterprise that Sheikh Tahnoon personally controls with an A.I. business and cutting-edge ventures in genomics and cloud computing.
But as advances in A.I. technology became a phenomenon, it was clear that G42 lacked a crucial tool: the world’s most powerful computer chips. This technology is designed primarily by U.S. companies, particularly Nvidia. The United States had export policies that limited sales to certain foreign countries to prevent the technology’s misuse.
Sheikh Tahnoon approached the Biden White House, seeking access to these chips. The outreach included a high-level meeting with Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary for President Joseph R. Biden, on the sheikh’s luxury yacht, according to two former U.S. officials.
Nvidia was enthusiastic about selling its products in a new market. But Mr. Biden’s national security staff and some U.S. intelligence officials had serious doubts.
The Emirates had performed joint exercises with the Chinese military, and G42 had formed wide-ranging business partnerships with Chinese tech companies. U.S. officials worried that China might gain access to Emirati data centers, accelerating its efforts to build A.I.-enhanced weapons that could someday be deployed against American soldiers.
Alan Estevez, who was an under secretary of commerce in the Biden administration, recalled telling Sheikh Tahnoon that he could not share technology with both the United States and China.
“You’re going to have to make a choice,” Mr. Estevez recalled saying.
In the end, all the U.A.E. could extract from the Biden administration was a government-sanctioned deal with Microsoft that gave G42 access to a small number of the high-powered chips, with rules that limited what the Emirati firm could do with them. G42 also agreed to eliminate certain Chinese technology from its operations.
Mr. Trump’s election victory in 2024 opened new doors.
Suddenly Sheikh Tahnoon had allies in Washington who loved making deals. Among them was Steve Witkoff.
Mr. Witkoff, 68, met Mr. Trump about four decades ago as a young lawyer working with bigwig real estate executives in New York. They became golfing buddies and close confidants.
Two months before Election Day, they went into business together. Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Trump and their sons appeared on a social media stream to announce that they were starting World Liberty. An investor prospectus showed that the Trump and the Witkoff families would own large amounts of the company’s digital currency and receive a cut of the firm’s profits.
The election changed Mr. Witkoff’s life. He had never played any role in international diplomacy, but Mr. Trump gave him a broad portfolio including foreign wars and hostage negotiations.
He started his work while Mr. Biden was still in office. One of his first stops was the U.A.E. in December.
Immediately the division between government and family business started to blur.
First, Mr. Witkoff spoke behind closed doors at a major crypto conference in Abu Dhabi and met with Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire who had recently invested $30 million in World Liberty.
Second, the trip gave Mr. Witkoff a chance to renew his relationships in the U.A.E., a source of capital that he had tapped during his real estate career.
In 2013 and again in 2019, the Emiratis had invested in a New York hotel that Mr. Witkoff’s real estate company had purchased, the Park Lane. Mr. Witkoff is also close with Marty Edelman, a New York lawyer who participated in the Park Lane deal and now works for Sheikh Tahnoon’s G42 as general counsel.
Whether Mr. Witkoff met with Sheikh Tahnoon on the December trip is disputed. A person briefed on the trip told The Times that they met around the time of the conference, confirming reports by Axios and The Wall Street Journal.
But a White House spokeswoman denied that any meeting took place in December, while confirming the subsequent get-together in Sardinia, which she said was focused on mediating international conflicts.
What is clear is that Mr. Witkoff was soon in the middle of overlapping billion-dollar business deals with Sheikh Tahnoon.
His son Zach, a founder of World Liberty, kept tabs on the Middle East discussions. In private conversations last year, he alluded to high-level meetings in the region, according to a person familiar with the matter and messages viewed by The Times.
Sheikh Tahnoon had become “a good friend of the family,” Zach Witkoff told an associate.
A Raging Debate
Just blocks from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, on the edge of the Potomac River, the U.A.E. has its own Washington-area operations hub.
In March, the Emiratis hosted an extraordinary procession of guests there. Sheikh Tahnoon was in town, hoping to make a deal.
The visitors included cabinet members like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Some of the biggest names in tech also traveled to the compound, including Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft. Joining via video link was Jensen Huang, the founder of Nvidia, whose chips were critical to the Emiratis’ plans.
In the middle of that week, Mr. Trump hosted Sheikh Tahnoon for dinner, alongside Vice President JD Vance and much of the cabinet. Mr. Witkoff sat next to the sheikh, who was across from the president. At the end of the table sat Mr. Witkoff’s old friend, Mr. Edelman — the G42 general counsel.
It looked to be an image of harmony for Sheikh Tahnoon.
Behind the scenes, however, there was discord. The sheikh wanted an export policy that would give the U.A.E. more access to the most advanced American-designed A.I. chips.
Several administration officials, including members of the National Security Council, preferred to tighten export rules, primarily to prevent China’s access to the chips. One of them was David Feith, who had served in the State Department during Mr. Trump’s first term and helped shape the administration’s aggressive stance on China.
Mr. Feith, who had returned in the second term as senior director for technology on the National Security Council, pushed what he and colleagues called the “America First” A.I. chips plan. It would restrict foreign access to the most advanced chips for at least a year, in conflict with Sheikh Tahnoon’s demands.
But in early April, not long after Sheikh Tahnoon’s visit to Washington, Mr. Trump fired six security council officials, including Mr. Feith. The dismissals came after a roughly 30-minute meeting between Mr. Trump and Ms. Loomer.
Ms. Loomer said her opposition to Mr. Feith had to do, in part, with his father’s political views when he was serving in the administration of President George W. Bush. She said it did not pertain to the chips negotiations.
The firing turned the tide for the U.A.E.
With Mr. Feith out of the way, Mr. Sacks, the A.I. and crypto czar, became a key figure in the negotiations.
Mr. Sacks, 53, was one of the early executives at PayPal with Elon Musk and later became a Silicon Valley investor, an influential podcaster and a major Trump fund-raiser.
He adopted the view of many tech executives who believed that the United States could lead the A.I. revolution by ensuring that domestically designed chips powered data centers the world over.
With appropriate safeguards, chip sales to the Middle East should be effectively unlimited, Mr. Sacks contended in meetings starting in late April, one of which included Emirati diplomats.
“The choice is do we want these countries to be the piggy bank for American A.I. or for Chinese A.I.?” Mr. Sacks said on a podcast in May.
His vocal support left other U.S. negotiators frustrated, fearing that it had cost them leverage to demand concessions, like a curb on military ties between the Emirates and China.
Some administration colleagues also expressed concern because Mr. Sacks had once invested in the A.I. industry and had longstanding business relationships in the Gulf, according to four people involved in the negotiations.
Early investors in Craft Ventures, the firm Mr. Sacks helped start in 2017, included the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which is now overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon. Also among Craft’s investors was the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, another nation seeking A.I. chips. (A spokeswoman for Craft said the Emirati investment represented a “tiny percentage of Craft’s funds.”)
Until at least March, Mr. Sacks, who is still working at Craft, was also invested in a stock fund that included the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which builds Nvidia’s chips, and other A.I.-related companies such as Amazon and Meta. (The size of those stakes isn’t publicly known.)
The White House recognized that Mr. Sacks’s investments could present a problem. On March 31, the White House counsel, David Warrington, signed a letter that granted Mr. Sacks special permission to participate in government decisions that might affect his financial holdings. Without the waiver, those kinds of actions could violate a conflict of interest law.
The waiver came less than two weeks after Sheikh Tahnoon announced that he had met with Mr. Sacks in Washington to discuss A.I. “investment opportunities.”
The waiver was justified, Mr. Warrington wrote, because Mr. Sacks’s personal investments in A.I. were worth less than 2 percent of his total holdings, while Craft’s A.I. shares accounted for less than 1 percent. Mr. Sacks and Craft were also in the process of selling almost all of their remaining stakes in A.I. firms, with the last of them to be sold by the end of June.
Mr. Sacks brought “a unique and invaluable perspective” to the White House, Mr. Warrington wrote.
A Craft spokeswoman said Mr. Sacks had honored ethical standards and completed the promised divestments, though she would not specify when. In its statement, the White House said that Mr. Sacks’s conversation with Sheikh Tahnoon in March was part of a series of “meet-and-greets” and that Mr. Sacks did not join the chip negotiations until May.
Mr. Sacks did not know any U.A.E. representatives before his government service and “participated in the negotiations for the sole purpose of advancing administration policy,” the statement said.
As the negotiations over the chip exports continued, some White House officials noticed that Mr. Sacks had an ally in Mr. Witkoff, who was seen as a valuable supporter for the U.A.E., because he had Mr. Trump’s ear, according to four administration officials.
While the chips debate raged, the Emiratis floated an even bigger request.
They wanted the Trump administration to sign off on a plan for TSMC to build a chip factory in the U.A.E., even as the United States was providing billions of dollars in subsidies for the company to build one in Arizona. Several senior administration officials emphasized that they would not support the U.A.E. plant, according to four participants in the discussions.
At a meeting in the spring, Mr. Witkoff discussed the plan with TSMC executives and Emirati officials, arguing that it was not the right time to push for the factory, according to three people with direct knowledge of the conversation. A White House official disputed this account, saying Mr. Witkoff “was not in those meetings.”
Behind the scenes, the topic surfaced again, and Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Sacks both pushed for the factory to be built in the months that followed, the people with knowledge said.
And in private correspondence, a G42 executive described an effort to enlist Mr. Witkoff’s help with the Commerce Department, which had to sign off on any export deals and was moving cautiously, according to text messages reviewed by The Times. In one message, Talal Al Kaissi, a government affairs executive at G42, praised Mr. Witkoff and said that a company official was seeking his assistance.
The White House spokeswoman disputed that the executive asked Mr. Witkoff to help with the Commerce Department. She acknowledged that Mr. Witkoff was “briefed” on the overall chip discussions, but she maintained that “he did not participate,” an important standard in federal ethics rules that prohibit government officials from taking part in matters that could benefit their families.
An email arrived in early May in the inboxes of U.S. officials working on the negotiations. A new proposal increased the number of chips that would be sent to the U.A.E. in the coming years from about 100,000 a year to 500,000, with a fifth of them slated for G42.
Many of these chips would be the most advanced on the market. In return, the Emiratis would spend hundreds of billions over a decade to bolster U.S. industrial growth, including investments in A.I., according to the Trump administration. (The final deal did not include approvals for the TSMC factory in the U.A.E.)
Several top officials tried to block the new proposal or make tweaks to toughen the demands on the Emiratis before any deal was signed, according to the Trump administration officials with knowledge of the deliberations.
What most disturbed these dissenting officials was that the White House was asking so little from Sheikh Tahnoon. They had hoped for an upfront guarantee that the Emirates would cancel military exercises with China or stop sharing technology with Chinese companies.
But Mr. Sacks argued that additional demands could scuttle the deal and that security guarantees would be worked out in subsequent negotiations. And Mr. Witkoff told senior White House officials that it was vital to complete the deal before Mr. Trump’s upcoming trip to the Middle East, two people familiar with the matter said.
By mid-May, Mr. Sacks, Mr. Witkoff and Sheikh Tahnoon had prevailed.
Dual Roles
While the chips deal was being hashed out, another alliance with the U.A.E. was taking shape.
Until last year, Zach Witkoff, 32, was virtually unknown in the crypto world. But while his father was jetting around the world on White House duty, the younger Mr. Witkoff transformed into a crypto superstar — the face of World Liberty.
Even if his father divested from the company, he would remain one of its primary leaders. In March, he joined a group of the industry’s most powerful executives for a gathering at the White House headlined by Mr. Trump and Mr. Sacks. He celebrated the birth of his son by naming him “Don,” after the president.
But the highlight was an announcement on March 25, just days after Sheikh Tahnoon’s dinner at the White House.
In a post on X, Zach Witkoff revealed that World Liberty would begin selling a stablecoin. These crypto coins maintain a fixed price of $1, making them easier to use than digital currencies like Bitcoin, which fluctuate in value.
Stablecoins are hugely profitable, because issuers like World Liberty can accept deposits from investors, give them stablecoins in return and then invest the deposits to generate a yield.
World Liberty’s stablecoin would be called USD1, Zach Witkoff said, and was tailored to “sovereign investors and major institutions.”
The announcement also revealed that World Liberty was working with a company called BitGo, backed by Mr. Sacks’s Craft Ventures, that would store the reserves underlying the stablecoin. (A White House ethics waiver said that Craft’s stake in BitGo was small enough that it would not affect Mr. Sacks’s work.)
As a newcomer to the crypto industry, Zach Witkoff would need money and expertise to fulfill his lofty ambitions. He turned to the U.A.E.
Beginning in January, one of Sheikh Tahnoon’s lieutenants, Fiacc Larkin, a computer science expert who serves as G42’s head of crypto, joined World Liberty, where his title was “chief strategic adviser,” according to his LinkedIn profile and three people familiar with the matter.
Put plainly, while the U.A.E. was negotiating with the White House to secure chips for G42, a G42 employee was helping the Witkoffs and the Trumps make money.
Mr. Larkin did not respond to requests for comment. The G42 spokesman did not address questions about Mr. Larkin but said the company has rigorous protocols governing “professional conduct, external engagements and conflict of interest.”
In May, Zach Witkoff arrived at a luxury resort in Dubai to speak at Token2049, one of the world’s largest crypto conferences.
From the stage, Mr. Witkoff sang the praises of the Emirati royals. The U.A.E. was “just one incredible country,” he said, “the most innovative country on planet Earth today.”
He also revealed that World Liberty had just agreed to a deal with a company called MGX that G42 had helped establish. (Sheikh Tahnoon is MGX’s chairman.) MGX would use World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in Binance, a giant crypto exchange, Mr. Witkoff announced.
It was the single largest investment in a crypto company ever, according to Binance. The transaction effectively handed World Liberty a $2 billion bank deposit, funds that the company could invest to generate returns in the tens of millions annually.
The transaction also created a financial link between the Trump family and Binance, a firm seeking relief from the U.S. government. Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, has applied for a presidential pardon, after he pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023.
“We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” Zach Witkoff said in Dubai.
Asked whether the deal was designed to support the Trumps and Witkoffs or secure access to chips, an MGX spokeswoman said in a statement that the company had evaluated several possible stablecoins, assessing “business suitability, the jurisdiction and currency of assets backing the stablecoin, and compliance history.”
“On this basis MGX selected USD1,” the statement said.
‘Your Wonderful Brother’
It was the start of a succession of wins for the Witkoffs, the Trumps and the Emiratis.
In May, during a tour of the Middle East, the president made a stop in the U.A.E. to announce the chips deal. He was joined by Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Sacks, Sheikh Tahnoon and other Emirati leaders at Qasr Al Watan, the presidential palace.
The officials gathered around a scale model of the technology facilities that the U.A.E. intends to build, using the American chips that the Trump administration had agreed to share.
That agreement is still subject to final approval. But in Abu Dhabi, the negotiators touted the framework as historic.
“This partnership has taken a significant leap forward since you assumed office,” Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the U.A.E., told Mr. Trump.
Standing beside the model, Mr. Trump praised the ability of Middle East leaders to move decisively.
“A very strong man, a brilliant man, a man of vision like few others,” Mr. Trump said of Sheikh Mohamed.
Then he added his appreciation for Sheikh Tahnoon, “your wonderful brother.”
Mr. Trump made no public mention of the $2 billion transaction with his family company.
Soon many of the key figures in the U.A.E. deals were reunited in Washington.
They gathered at a private club called Executive Branch that Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son, had helped open this year in the tony neighborhood of Georgetown.
Mr. Sacks and Steve Witkoff arrived for the grand opening in June, along with Zach Witkoff. Also among the guests was Mr. Huang of Nvidia, whose chips were set to be exported to the U.A.E. by the hundreds of thousands. And there in the crowd was the Emirati ambassador to the United States.
They had much to celebrate.
Eric Lipton reported from Washington, David Yaffe-Bellany reported from New York and Dubai, Bradley Hope reported from London, Tripp Mickle reported from San Francisco and Paul Mozur reported from Taipei. Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Adam Satariano, Devon Lum, Robert Draper and Debra Kamin contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
