Donald Trump’s sons have thrown their weight behind a billion-dollar “war chest” to target industries his administration is pushing to expand.
Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have both committed personal capital to investment vehicles run by a brokerage with offices inside Trump Tower, Dominari Holdings, that has steered roughly $1 billion into smaller publicly traded firms across sectors the White House is actively championing, The Financial Times reports.
Those industries include artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and drone manufacturing. Two people with knowledge of the arrangement told the newspaper the brothers have backed entities created by American Ventures, an arm of Dominari Holdings, and that they have “anchored” most of the firms’ deals.
Precise individual commitments are not public. Eric Trump and Don Jr. collectively hold roughly 12 percent of Dominari, which in turn owns 90 percent of American Ventures.
That firm, based near the brothers’ Jupiter golf course in Florida, has spun up some two dozen entities since last summer. Regulatory filings through early April showed the firm managing $1.04 billion spread among 21 vehicles, with bets ranging from a crypto lender registered in Bermuda to a waxing-salon chain in Florida and a nuclear start-up.
Dominari described its strategy as targeting “U.S.-based leaders in new technologies that create American jobs and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign resources.”
Spokespeople for both Trump sons described them as “passive” backers with no operational role and no dealings with federal agencies on the portfolio firms’ behalf.
Their move into politically favored industries comes as the family’s fortunes have ballooned.
Forbes valued the president himself at $7.3 billion in September, up from $3.9 billion a year earlier, while Bloomberg in January put combined Trump family wealth around $6.8 billion.
The two sons themselves have leapt from estimated personal fortunes of $40 million-$50 million each before the 2024 election to roughly $400 million for Eric and $300 million for Don Jr., per Forbes.
The brothers’ rapidly expanding investment footprint has drawn increasingly sharp criticism over conflicts of interest. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has called the family’s commercial activity emblematic of a “Trump family self-enrichment plan, built on pay-to-play deals and corrupt foreign interests.”
His counterpart on the Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, said such ventures “signal to foreign entities that our institutions are for sale and that the White House can be bought and paid for.”
The Daily Beast contacted the White House, along with representatives for Eric and Donald Trump Jr., for comment on this story.
“This is the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.”
