Trump Family Crypto Scheme Lives On as Sons Deny Abandoning World Liberty Financial

World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s controversial cryptocurrency project, is doubling down amid swirling rumors that Donald Trump Jr. and his siblings had quietly cut ties. Speaking at the Consensus crypto conference in Miami, Trump Jr. and co-founder Zach Witkoff emphatically denied reports that the Trump sons had abandoned the venture.

“I think I saw on Twitter at one point that Don and Eric had abandoned the project,” Witkoff said, clearly surprised by the misinformation. Trump Jr. quickly echoed the sentiment, blaming bots and blind followers for spreading falsehoods after World Liberty removed the Trump family’s names from its website.

“You get enough people who blindly follow what someone’s feeding them, you get bots pushing it… I don’t think I’d be on this stage here if that was the case,” Trump Jr. insisted, adding that Don and Eric Trump remain “very much co-founders of the project.”

This public reassurance comes as World Liberty faces a high-profile legal battle with crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, founder of the Tron network and a key financial backer turned adversary. Sun sued World Liberty last month, accusing its leadership of widespread misconduct. In response, World Liberty filed a defamation lawsuit claiming Sun spread falsehoods and secretly shorted the company’s native token, WLFI, to tank its market price.

“We wouldn’t have filed the lawsuit if we didn’t have the receipts,” Witkoff said, framing the legal action as a “last resort” to defend the company’s reputation.

Beyond courtroom drama, World Liberty is aggressively pursuing regulatory approval for a national trust bank charter through the Treasury Department, a move that would grant it significant banking powers tied to its stablecoin, USD1. Witkoff expressed optimism about nearing “conditional approval,” signaling the firm’s ambitions to embed itself deeper into the financial system.

But Democrats have seized on World Liberty’s regulatory push as emblematic of the Trump administration’s brazen corruption. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the pending bank charter “perhaps the most disgraceful presidential corruption scandal in U.S. history,” highlighting concerns that the Trump family is leveraging political power to enrich themselves through unregulated crypto schemes.

World Liberty’s saga underscores a broader pattern of Trump-era grift: using political influence to sell access and favors through opaque financial ventures. The firm’s insistence that the Trump sons remain involved signals that this questionable crypto operation is far from dead — and that accountability for these pay-to-play tactics remains urgently needed.