Nov 11

Nov 11 Trump's Business Deals In Middle-East and Europe: Why Congress May Investigate and What It Means

Summary

What Is Happening

On Nov 3rd, the Democratic Party won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

From Jan 3rd, 2027, Democrats will lead the committees that can force people to answer hard questions. One of the most important is the House Committee on Oversight, which will be led by Representative Robert Garcia. On election night he sent a short message to President Donald Trump and his family: "Lawyer up."

Garcia says his first target is what he calls the Trump family's corruption. Democrats want to look closely at how the Trump family business and the President's relatives make money, especially in the Middle East and Europe. The White House says there is nothing wrong. It says the President follows all the rules and that the Democrats are playing politics.

Dr. 🆎, who studies human-centered Super Intelligence, geopolitical strategy, AI warfare and bioterrorism risk, explains the issue simply. "When a leader's family business and a country's foreign policy touch the same people, other countries start to ask whose interest is being served," Dr. 🆎 says. "That question alone can weaken trust, even before any proof is found."

How the Trump Business Works Abroad

The Trump Organization does not usually build hotels and towers abroad with its own money. It uses licensing. A local company pays to put the Trump name on a building or golf resort. That company raises the money, builds the project and takes the risk. The Trump Organization collects fees and sometimes earns more for managing the hotel.

This business has grown very fast.

For 2025, the President reported about $60 million in foreign licensing income, roughly 900% more than in 2023. Nearly two thirds came from Gulf developers. Projects in the United Arab Emirates brought in about $22 million, Saudi Arabia about $9 million and Qatar about $5 million.

Which Projects Are Involved

In the Middle East, the main partner is Dar Global, the international arm of the Saudi company Dar Al Arkan. Together they have six projects in four countries.

In Dubai, they are building a tall Trump tower worth about $1 billion. In Saudi Arabia, there are two housing projects in Jeddah and one in Riyadh. In Oman, there is a golf and resort community near Muscat worth about $4 billion. In Qatar, a golf club with luxury villas is planned.

In Europe, the Trump Organization is working with a local developer in Romania on Trump Tower Bucharest and a golf and apartment project in Cluj-Napoca. The family also runs golf resorts in Scotland and Ireland, including Turnberry, where the President signed a trade framework with the head of the European Commission in 2025.

Some projects belong to the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, rather than the Trump Organization. His investment company, Affinity Partners, plans resorts in Albania, where thousands protested and the anti-corruption prosecutor opened an inquiry. In Serbia, a planned Trump Tower in Belgrade was dropped in December 2025, hours after officials were charged with corruption linked to the project.

There are also indirect links.

The Trump family helps run a crypto company called World Liberty Financial. Reports say a company linked to a UAE royal agreed to buy almost half of it for about $500 million, days before Trump took office. Kushner's firm gets much of its money from Gulf government funds. The President also leads a new group called the Board of Peace, meant to help rebuild Gaza. Critics worry its money is handled without enough public oversight.

What Benefits Have Trump and His Family Received

Critics list several things. Qatar gave the United States a Boeing 747 jet worth about $400 million, now used as Air Force One. People disagree about whether this breaks a rule in the Constitution that requires Congress's permission for gifts from foreign governments. The Justice Department says it was legal.

The family also earned huge sums from crypto. One study says the President made more than $526 million from selling digital tokens. Another says the family earned about $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025. Many ordinary buyers of these tokens lost money.

Critics also point to a chain of events. An Abu Dhabi investment firm used the family's stablecoin, USD1, to put $2 billion into the Binance exchange. Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao, was later pardoned by the President. Weeks afterward, the United States approved sales of advanced computer chips to a UAE company. Lawmakers say about $187 million from the UAE deal went to Trump family companies. The White House and World Liberty Financial deny any link among these events.

To be fair, a business deal is not a crime, and many Republicans say the family's deals are lawful. The question is whether government decisions were influenced by money. No court has decided that.

How Likely Is a Probe?

By a probe, we mean an official, public investigation by the House Oversight Committee, or a similar committee, that sends written demands for documents and names the Trump Organization, family members or related companies in Middle East or European deals. These numbers are our best judgment, not hard science.

By the end of Jan 2027, a probe is about 88% likely. The Democrats have promised it. A subpoena, which is a legal order to hand over documents, is less likely this early, at about 25%, because new committees need time to set up.

By the end of July 2027, a probe is about 96% likely. At least one subpoena is about 72% likely. A public hearing with a major person, such as Kushner or Eric Trump, is about 45% likely.

By the end of Dec 2027, a probe is about 98% likely and a subpoena about 88%. Sworn testimony from a family member or Kushner is about 50% likely. A court fight or contempt vote is about 40% likely, and a final committee report about 55%.

What This Means for the United States

The probe could help or hurt. It could lead to new rules on disclosure, gifts and crypto. But it could also divide the country more if people see it as only politics.

It will also make foreign policy harder. Kushner and Steve Witkoff lead talks on Iran, Gaza and Russia, while Kushner runs a private company funded partly by Gulf governments. Other countries may use questions about those links as pressure. The war with Iran, which began on Feb 28th, 2026, is also unresolved.

Dr. 🆎 adds a point about technology. "Advanced computer chips are now like oil in the last century," Dr. 🆎 says. "Deciding who gets them affects business, war and even biological risks. Those decisions must be free from private money, so the public can trust them."

What This Means for Middle East Allies

Gulf countries need American protection while the Iran conflict continues, and they do not want to be pulled into American party politics. But their investments and gifts will be studied. Qatar is the most visible because of the jet. The UAE has the most complicated links because of crypto and chips. Saudi Arabia has several Trump-branded projects and large security needs. Many will build better ties with Democrats in Congress.

What This Means for European Allies

In Europe, the issue is more about trust and good government than money. Romania is an important NATO country, and a Trump-branded tower there will draw attention. Albania and Serbia want to join the European Union, so projects tied to the Trump family will be tested against rules on fair contracts and protecting public land.

What Happens Next

Congress should focus on clear evidence and work with both parties on simple rules for presidents' family businesses, foreign gifts and crypto. The Trump Organization could publish a full list of foreign deals, partners and fees. Kushner and Witkoff could step away from talks where their private clients are involved. Gulf and European partners should check their own deals and be ready to answer questions.

Dr. 🆎 urges careful use of technology. "Super Intelligence tools can follow money across companies and borders much faster than any human team," Dr. 🆎 says. "But people must make the final decisions, and fairness must stay in place. Technology should help us find the truth, not decide guilt."

The Bottom Line

A probe into the Trump family's business deals in the Middle East and Europe looks very likely.

The known facts are already important: rising foreign licensing income, many Trump-branded projects in the Gulf and Europe, a gifted jet and huge crypto profits. What is still unproven is whether any government decision was bought?

That answer will come from documents, witnesses and timelines. For the United States and its allies, trust is the most valuable thing in international relations, and open, honest dealing is the best way to protect it.

Dr. Antonio Bhardwaj

Dr. Antonio Bhardwaj is a polymath and veteran strategist whose career spans more than four decades of high-stakes leadership across business, public life, geopolitics, and scholarship.

He has served as president of two SAP consulting partner firms and has combined that operational record with long-form research at the intersection of technical infrastructure and human behavior. Twice a candidate for the United States Congress, he brings to his present work a practitioner’s understanding of electoral politics, legislative constraint, and the distance between policy design and public consent. That experience sharpens his reading of national division: campaigns expose how fiscal choices, institutional trust, and social psychology interact in real time, and how durable reform depends on legitimacy as much as on technical soundness.

At the center of his current practice is Strategic Country Assessment. Dr. Bhardwaj approaches the state as a diagnostician, applying a structured framework to the social, economic, and political conditions of nations. He joins fiscal analysis with social psychology to trace the origins of budget imbalance and civic fracture, and to propose systemic remedies aimed at economic stability and social cohesion. His congressional campaigns inform that method. They trained a habit of testing abstract models against voter realities, institutional incentives, and the limits of mandate—an outlook he now applies to country-level diagnosis and to advice on contested policy environments.

This work is extended by his engagement with computational epistemology: the formal structures through which machine systems represent claims, and the ways those representations meet human belief. He treats the present convergence of machine intelligence and global infrastructure—what he terms the Prometheus Protocol—as a problem of knowledge, governance, and risk, not merely of engineering.

His academic formation includes doctorates in Social Psychology and Theology, grounding his attention to collective belief, moral frameworks, and the unspoken drivers of institutional behavior. He is advancing further study toward a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. A foundation in mechanical engineering, international trade, and finance supplies the structural discipline he brings to military theory, national policy, and global maritime energy chokepoints. Parallel work on high-stakes initial public offerings gives him a direct view of capital formation, strategic competition, and the contests that shape technological and economic primacy.

As Editor-in-Chief of Washington Media and an advisor associated with United Nations forums, his commentary on state power, institutional capture, and the historical trajectories of Russia and the Gulf has become reference reading for observers of a multipolar order. Through his Selective Writings, he also argues for the vulnerable, pressing for the dismantling of structures that deny dignity and free choice.

Outside formal analysis, he remains attached to the rhythms of the natural world. An avid photographer of forests, waterfalls, and caverns, and a close observer of butterflies, he treats ecological interconnection as a standing corrective to purely instrumental views of policy and power. That sensibility is continuous with his life as a single parent—the commitment he regards as his most consequential—and with a public outlook formed in two congressional campaigns: that authority is justified only where it enlarges freedom, and that analysis which cannot survive contact with citizens is incomplete.

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