Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump has pocketed an estimated $3 billion from his various business enterprises. His family is estimated to have raked in billions more. Much of the money appears to be coming from foreign governments and others seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House.
The scale of President Trump’s self-enrichment is unprecedented, as is his openly transactional approach to governing. In an era dominated by enormous concentration of private wealth and political power, Trump’s second term in office has laid bare the many channels — direct and indirect — through which money can reach the president and shape the national agenda. Gaps in ethics rules and a lack of real enforcement options mean that little if any of this profiteering is illegal, pointing to the need for significant reforms.
The president is not covered by the same ethics rules as other federal officials.
The president is exempt from many of the basic ethics rules that apply to other federal officials. For instance, most executive branch employees are not allowed to participate in government matters that could have a direct impact on their personal finances or those of their spouses or business affiliates. That restriction even extends to situations where employees could appear to have a financial conflict of interest that would raise questions about their impartiality. Where participation in a given matter is a core part of an official’s duties, Office of Government Ethics rules generally require them to sell or divest from the relevant assets.
The president, however, is exempt from those rules, leaving him free to use the power of the presidency in ways that directly benefit him and his family. Many of the notable examples in Trump’s second term relate to the cryptocurrency sector, now the source of much of the president’s personal wealth. Trump has sought to roll back restrictions on the industry and advance its other priorities while doling out benefits to purchasers of his own cryptocurrency products. These include pardons and other favorable legal treatment for industry moguls and even privileged access to advanced U.S. computer chip technology, which the administration granted to the United Arab Emirates after one of its state-backed companies took a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s main cryptocurrency platform.
Likewise, most executive branch employees are strictly prohibited from receiving gifts from sources that their department regulates, or who have a vested interest in their work. Again, the president is generally exempt from that requirement and free to accept gifts from people and companies with a financial interest in what the president and his administration are doing.
When Apple, seeking to protect its products from tariffs, announced a major domestic investment, the company’s CEO met with Trump in the Oval Office and gave the president a custom glass sculpture set in a 24-karat gold base.
There’s also the Hatch Act, which bans executive branch employees from engaging in political activity while on duty to ensure that the federal government operates in a nonpartisan manner. The president is not covered by the Hatch Act and is allowed to engage in partisan politics. Although his immediate subordinates are subject to Hatch Act restrictions, senior officials are rarely, if ever, targeted for enforcement.
There are some anti-corruption laws that do apply to the president.
Several other anti-corruption safeguards technically apply to the president, but there are major impediments that keep them from serving as actual checks on wrongdoing.
Annual Financial Disclosures
One core federal ethics rule does apply to the president: He is required to file annual reports disclosing his personal finances. These reports enable the public and coequal branches of government to at least see some potential financial conflicts of interest the president may have, although there are gaps in the information officials are required to provide. Past presidents also voluntarily disclosed their personal tax returns, but Trump broke with that norm during both of his White House stints.
Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses
The Constitution itself includes rules aimed at insulating the president from corrupting influences. The Foreign Emoluments Clause bans all federal officials, including the president, from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without congressional approval. The Domestic Emoluments Clause bars the president alone from personally receiving gifts or other benefits from Congress or the states beyond his salary.
Historically, these provisions haven’t needed to be formally enforced, as federal officials usually took steps to comply voluntarily. However, in Trump’s first term, he broke with precedent and refused to get rid of business holdings that received patronage and other benefits from state officials and foreign governments. These apparent violations of the Emoluments Clauses prompted lawsuits, but the courts never actually weighed in on the merits: The lawsuits foundered on procedural grounds and were dismissed after he left office in 2021. That left considerable doubt about what mechanisms exist, if any, to enforce these provisions absent federal legislation.
Anti-Bribery Laws
The president, like all public officials, is ostensibly bound by federal criminal laws banning bribery and similar conduct. Indeed, the Constitution itself lists bribery as a reason to remove a president from office, and the federal ban on bribing public officials expressly applies to the president. However, in recent decades, the Supreme Court has weakened many federal anticorruption laws.
The Court has also ruled that presidents are immune from being prosecuted for official acts they take that are “within [their] exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” Bribery, at its core, would involve taking illicit money in exchange for carrying out a so-called official act. As a result, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling raises questions about whether and how a president could be investigated and prosecuted for taking bribes.
Campaign Finance Laws
Presidential candidates — even if they are the sitting president — are also supposed to abide by the limited rules on the books around election spending, including restrictions on who can donate to their campaign, how much donors can give them, and their ability to coordinate with outside groups such as super PACs.
These rules, however, are often more loophole than law. Thanks to Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United, wealthy donors can pump limitless funds into the political system through super PACs. These entities are supposed to operate independently from candidates and disclose their donors, but in practice they often end up working hand-in-glove with candidates and deriving a substantial amount of their funding from “dark money” groups that keep their funding sources secret. Even individuals and companies holding billions of dollars in lucrative government contracts are essentially free to spend unlimited money on elections. The result: a political system in which wealthy interests play an outsized role in setting the agenda, with the president at its center.
While the erosion of campaign finance rules long predates Trump’s reelection, his political operation has still found ways to push the envelope. MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting Trump, has raked in at least $305 million since the 2024 election, almost entirely from million-dollar contributions from megadonors. The Constitution bars Trump from running for a third term, so it is not clear how this enormous war chest will be used. One possibility is that the president will use the money to back his favored candidates in the midterms and beyond. Unlike funds deposited in a traditional campaign account, however, super PAC money can also be used for nonelectoral or nongovernmental purposes, including to cover a candidate’s personal expenses such as legal fees.
Legal Defense Funds
Presidents, like other federal officials and candidates, are allowed to set up personal legal defense funds, which they can use to raise money to cover legal bills related to matters surrounding their reputation or fitness for office. These funds, like campaign committees, are subject to strict contribution limits and disclosure requirements. However, gaps in the law often make it easier for high-profile officials like the president to use money from other sources, including super PACs, to cover personal legal bills.
Indeed, while running for reelection in 2024, Trump used his PACs to cover upwards of $100 million in legal costs for which he would have otherwise been personally on the hook, and did not bother to set up a traditional legal defense fund.
Other avenues through which individuals and companies are spending money to curry favor with the president include his inaugural committee, his presidential library, and the White House ballroom construction project.
Money is also being used to curry favor with the president through many other channels that are largely — if not entirely — unregulated.
For instance, when a president takes office, they typically celebrate with events organized by an inaugural committee. These committees can rake in unlimited funds from companies and private donors (with very few exceptions), making them appealing options for those looking to curry favor with the new administration. When Trump took office in 2025, his inaugural committee received more than $245 million, including large donations from Big Tech, cryptocurrency companies, the pharmaceutical industry, fossil fuel interests, and other sectors facing regulation.
Likewise, after leaving office, presidents typically set up a presidential library, which is essentially a museum for documents and artifacts from their time in the White House that is usually intended to cast their legacy in a friendly light. These libraries are funded entirely through private donations with virtually no restrictions on who can donate or how much they can give.
Donors can even pump money into a presidential library fund while the president is still in office. In the first year of Trump’s second administration, his presidential library fund had already received more than $50 million. Several companies — ABC News, Meta, and Paramount — seeking to settle lawsuits from the president over personal grievances pledged to direct tens of millions of dollars into the library fund. Trump is not the first president to raise money for his library from donors looking for special favors. President Bill Clinton, for instance, notoriously pardoned financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife had donated $450,000 to Clinton’s library foundation.
The current administration has also unveiled new avenues for money to make its way into the White House — literally. Construction is currently underway on an opulent new White House ballroom, a project the president pledged to fund through private donations. While legal questions about his authority to order the project abound, the administration has already reportedly raised $400 million for it. The Trump administration has allowed many donors to the project to remain anonymous, but companies that have been identified publicly — including Amazon, Google, and Palantir — collectively hold billions of dollars in government contracts.
The ease with which private money can be used to curry favor with — and even be funneled directly to — the president undermines ideals of public service and further reinforces Americans’ already widespread sense that politics and policy are rigged to serve wealthy interests rather than solving the problems that matter most to people’s daily lives. In the wake of Gilded Age corruption, Watergate, and other scandals, Americans mobilized and Congress enacted far-reaching changes. A new era of reform is overdue.
How Weak Federal Ethics Laws Enable Presidential Profiteering was first published by the Brennan Center for Justice and was republished with permission.
Owen Bacskai is a policy strategist on the Federal Affairs team in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program.
Daniel I. Weiner serves as director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program.
