A longtime Circle shareholder filed suit against President Donald Trump on Thursday, alleging that two UAE-linked deals with his family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and pulled stablecoin business away from Circle’s USDC.
J. Benjamin Greenberg, a software engineer who worked at Circle from 2016 to 2018 and holds 10,000 of its shares, brought the case derivatively, on Circle’s behalf rather than his own, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Circle has reportedly distanced itself from the filing. “Circle did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying by CNBC.
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The Two Deals
The first deal dates to Jan. 16, 2025, four days before the inauguration, when Aryam Investment 1 agreed to pay $500 million for a 49% stake in World Liberty. The complaint links Aryam to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser. It says $187 million of the upfront half went to two Trump family entities and, drawing on the president’s 2025 financial disclosure, alleges about $75.5 million more reached them after he took office.
The second involves MGX, an Abu Dhabi investment firm Tahnoon chairs, which completed its $2 billion investment in Binance using USD1, World Liberty’s then-new stablecoin.
The Case for Circle
The suit argues that USD1 competes head to head with USDC, and that both issuers live off interest on their reserves, which made up about 96% of Circle’s 2025 revenue. “Every dollar of stablecoin steered to the President’s stablecoin, USD1, is a dollar that does not earn reserve income for Circle,” the complaint states. It puts Circle’s lost income at roughly $70 million to $82 million a year on the MGX money.
Greenberg asks the court to declare the payments unconstitutional, bar Trump from taking more without congressional consent, order an accounting and send the proceeds to the U.S. Treasury. He also seeks damages from World Liberty. Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder, and four Trump-linked holding companies are also named.
“These claims are without merit and we look forward to resolving them in court,” World Liberty spokesperson David Wachsman was quoted as saying by Politico. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly reportedly called it “yet another frivolous lawsuit” and said “there are no conflicts of interest.”
Trump’s financial disclosure for 2025 showed about $1.4 billion in crypto earnings, from his memecoin, World Liberty and the venture’s stablecoin business, Unchained reported.
The Aryam stake stayed private until the Wall Street Journal reported it in January 2026.
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