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DOES ANYBODY CARE THIS IS THE WORST BRIBERY SCANDAL SINCE TEAPOT
DOME?  
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Timothy Noah
September 17, 2025
The New Republic
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_ The UAE put $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, then got
export restrictions lifted on AI chips. Nothing to see here, move
along. _

President Trump and Steve Witkoff at the men's US Open.,

 

In 1922, Interior Secretary Albert Fall collected about $400,000
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two very rich oilmen, Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, and granted
them government leases to pump $100 million worth of petroleum from
Navy reserves in Elk Hills and Buena Vista, California, and in Teapot
Dome, Wyoming. It was a family affair, with Fall’s son-in-law M.T.
Everhart collecting from Sinclair and Fall himself collecting from
Doheny’s son Ned.

The Teapot Dome scandal, which occurred during an oligarchic period
not unlike our own, followed a recognizable trajectory. _The Wall
Street Journal_ broke the story
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Congress investigated, and Fall and Sinclair ended up doing prison
time. Everhart received immunity from prosecution and turned state’s
evidence against Fall. Ned Doheny, who received no immunity, died
during his father’s trial in an apparent murder-suicide
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conspirator (who was also presumed to be Ned’s gay lover). Perhaps
out of sympathy, the jury let Edward Doheny walk free.

Now a century has passed and America is once again an oligarchy
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But I don’t expect the World Liberty Financial scandal, which bears
many similarities to Teapot Dome—and which _The New York
Times_ exposed
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a superb investigative piece Monday—to follow a recognizable
trajectory. That’s because nothing since January has followed a
recognizable trajectory.

In the world I know, the _Times_ story would initiate a Justice
Department investigation and an impeachment inquiry, and Trump’s
Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff could be counted on to resign by week’s
end. In the mystifying world we inhabit today, none of these things
appears likely to happen. Sometimes that gets me very depressed
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What’s the World Liberty Financial scandal? Here’s the gist.

In May, Zach Witkoff, the 32-year-old son of the billionaire Steve
Witkoff, announced at a Dubai conference—while sitting beside Eric
Trump—that he’d collected $2 billion from one Sheikh Tahnoon bin
Zayed Al Nahyan, who controls the sovereign wealth fund of the United
Arab Emirates. That $2 billion purchased a stablecoin called USD1 from
World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm of which Witkoff _père et
fils_ are co-founders, and in which the Trump family owns a 60
percent stake
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It was, according to Binance
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participant in the deal), “the single largest investment into a
crypto company” that the world had ever seen.

Around the same time that Zach announced the UAE investment, his
father, Steve Witkoff, said he was divesting his own stake in World
Liberty Financial. Four months later, though, the White House says
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is “still in the process of divesting.” (High-ranking Trump
officials are notorious slowpokes
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this regard.)

What was worth $2 billion to UAE? By what we’re supposed to believe
is sheerest coincidence, two weeks after Zach Witkoff announced Sheik
Tahnoon’s stablecoin purchase, President Donald Trump agreed to
allow the UAE to import a large quantity of U.S.-produced AI computer
chips, with many of those chips going to a company named G42 that just
happens to be controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon. Previously, the Biden
administration had sharply limited how many such chips could go to UAE
because the country conducted joint military exercises with China,
with which G42 had multiple business partnerships. The UAE didn’t
like being told no, so after Trump entered office it negotiated a
better deal—with, among others, Steve Witkoff.

Another player in this drama is David Sacks, who pushed hard to give
UAE expanded access to the AI chips. Sacks is Trump’s AI and crypto
czar. He also continues to work for the investment firm he founded,
Craft Ventures. In the minds of some White House officials, this
presents a potential conflict of interest. (It’s a nice surprise to
learn there remain a few ethics-minded people in the Trump
administration.) For example, according to a March press release
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World Financial Liberty, USD1 reserves are “custodied by BitGo,”
which has significant backing
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The White House counsel finessed all this by giving Sacks a sort of
golden ticket
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allows Sacks to participate in government decisions that might affect
his investments. Albert Fall, eat your heart out!

The role of blabbermouth, played in the Teapot Dome scandal by the
prodigal son-in-law Everhart, is played in the World Liberty Financial
scandal by Zach Witkoff. In the unlikely event anybody ever turns
state’s evidence, put your money on Zach. His compulsive truth
telling furnishes this saga with some welcome comic relief.

“We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the
Emirates’ book,” Zach said at the Dubai conference. “They are
just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also
maintaining your family values.” The UAE, you may recall, is a
tribal autocracy, essentially a monarchy ruled by seven hereditary
sheikhdoms. Our present crisis is that we are already taking way too
many pages from His Highness and the Emirates’ book.

According to the _Times_, Zach blabbed to an associate that Sheikh
Tahnoon is “a good friend of the family.” (I’ll bet he is.)
The _Times _couldn’t resist adding that Zach named his son Don,
after the president. We know this because Trump said so
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media, and in confirming it Zach wrote: “It is an honor to name our
son after the greatest President of all time and all that you stand
for.” An anthropological aside: Over-the-top sycophancy is how
people in Washington signal closeness to the president these days, the
more public the better. Exaggerated self-debasement enhances status
and demonstrates you’re a person to be reckoned with.

One advantage prosecutors had a century ago was that the Supreme Court
had not yet decriminalized bribery
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the point where one can convict a politician only if the recipient
says, “Thank you, kind sir, for this illegal bribe” and recites
the quid pro quo like a catechism. A second advantage is that
prosecutors in the 1920s did not have to contend with the Supreme
Court’s outrageous decision
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year to shield presidents (well, one president in particular) from
nearly every conceivable type of prosecution. There’s no reason to
believe President Warren G. Harding was culpable for Teapot Dome,
except insofar as he was a fathead who kept very bad company. (Harding
died of a heart attack before the scandal broke.) But if he were, he
would not have enjoyed the benefit of such comprehensive immunity.

Responding to the _Times_ story Tuesday, Eric Trump said
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“My father’s the first guy who hasn’t made money off the
presidency.” In fact, the Trump family scored an estimated $5
billion
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a _single day_ two weeks ago with the issuing of another World
Liberty Financial stablecoin, WLFI. Trump himself, who was worth $2.3
billion a year ago, is worth $7.3 billion today, according
to _Forbes_
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have yet to see any evidence that he invested a single cent of his own
money to get there.

Our brains are not wired to comprehend presidential corruption on this
scale. Nor is our government, I fear, equipped to address a financial
scandal as enormous as the one revealed in the _Times__._ It’s
just another Tuesday in Pottersville
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Please, somebody prove me wrong.

_Timothy Noah is a New Republic staff writer and author of The
Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We
Can Do About It._

* Trump
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* Witkoff
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* United Arab Emirates
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* bribery scandal
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