Stephanopoulos Battles DOJ Official On Blockbuster WSJ Story Detailing Trumps Selling $500M Stake in Crypto Company to ‘Spy Sheikh’

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday pressed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a new Wall Street Journal report that said President Donald Trump’s crypto company received a $500 million investment from a “spy sheikh” right before he was inaugurated in 2025.

Blanche did not have much to say about the report and instead ripped President Joe Biden, saying he and his family made plenty of rotten business deals while he was in office.

The This Week host read Blanche key parts of the article, which reported Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan—the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser — purchased 49% of World Liberty Financial; Stephanopoulos noted Eric Trump is running the company and that the president is listed as the founder emeritus.

He also read a section from the report saying the deal “marked something unprecedented in American politics; a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”

Blanche scoffed when he was asked for his reaction.

“I love it when these papers talk about something ‘unprecedented’ or ‘never happening before’ — as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office,” Blanche said.

He continued, “I saw that article, I don’t have a comment on it beyond President Trump has been completely transparent. When his family travels for business reasons, they don’t do so in secret, we don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later.”

Blanche was obviously referring to the Hunter Biden laptop story that was published by the New York Post weeks before the 2020 election — and immediately censored by tech companies like Twitter.

He continued by saying it was not a big deal, because President Trump “doesn’t run the company” or profit from it.

Stephanopoulos followed up by saying Trump may not run the company, but he does profit from it. He also quoted one law professor in the story who said it looked like a violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, before reading another quote from ex-Trump attorney Ty Cobb, who said he would have advised “You don’t do business deals with the families of foreign countries. It taints American foreign policy.”

Blanche again scoffed when he was asked to respond to Cobb’s comment.

“I don’t have a response to that guy. I mean that guy hasn’t said a non-partisan thing in the past four years,” Blanche said. “I mean I could have predicted what you just said he would say.”

He then pointed to President Trump speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday night to show he is transparent.

“The president is ethical, he talks more to the press, he says what’s happening more than any president in history,” Blanche said. “You have a question about it, you can ask him.”

Watch above via ABC.

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