The list of the Trump administration’s flagrant conflicts of interest just got longer: A new Reuters report says a venture fund that has largely flown under the radar has exploded in size since Donald Trump Jr. joined as a partner and Donald Trump was again elected president in 2024.
According to Reuters, 1789 Capital — a reference to the year the Constitution went into effect — was once a “niche experiment that aimed to align equity investing with conservative political values.” Last year the fund was managing around $150 million in assets. But after Trump Jr. joined the fund as a partner and Trump was re-elected, its assets have multiplied to over $1 billion.
Reuters, citing financial records and interviews with people close to the firm, reports that 1789 Capital’s portfolio has expanded to include “defense contractors, artificial intelligence AI startups and other companies that ethics experts say could benefit from federal contracts and regulatory changes.” Its recent deals include investments in Elon Musk’s companies SpaceX, xAI and Neuralink. Reuters notes that the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda and policy shifts have “benefited at least three companies backed by 1789 Capital. However, Reuters could not determine whether 1789’s investments — or any negotiations preceding them — played a role in those outcomes.”
A representative for Trump Jr. denied a conflict of interest surrounding 1789 Capital to Reuters. “Don Jr. is a lifelong businessman who has no role inside the government, no decision making power in the government and has never held a government job,” the representative said. There’s no evidence that 1789 Capital has violated any laws or received preferential treatment.
But it’s important to remember that the law is often an inadequate safeguard against the kinds of conflicts of interest that threaten the integrity of public policymaking.
That the president’s son is a partner at a venture firm that invests in companies that the White House has influence over creates a number of possible threats to the democratic process. Trump Jr.’s involvement raises the question of whether investors in the fund will see 1789 Capital as yet another way to curry favor with the Trump family, or even just get on their radar. There’s also the question of whether Trump would be more inclined than he already would be to deregulate, give tax breaks to or show any other kind of favorable treatment to an industry or a company he believed could make the Trump family more prosperous.
Conflicts of interest make it impossible to pin down how much policy decision-making is influenced by personal or familial financial interests. But regardless of what’s happening behind closed doors, the effect is that it opens the door for inappropriate behavior.
Former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden set a poor example in this realm. During Biden’s time as vice president, Hunter Biden earned $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma even though he lacked substantive qualifications, which made it all but certain that he was trading on his surname to get the cushy gig.
However, the Trump family’s conflicts of interest dwarf those of all the presidential families that came before. Between the Trump Organization’s ongoing international real estate deals, Truth Social, Trump’s cryptocurrency business, his meme coin venture and his relentless merchandise rollouts, Trump has created a kind of empire of conflicts of interest. Taken in the aggregate, we don’t need some kind of smoking gun evidence to be concerned. The existence of this sprawling network of businesses tied to the presidency is in and of itself proof that something has gone horribly wrong.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
