President-elect Donald J. Trump was at the lectern talking through the approaching inauguration of his second term. But across the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., was a display of the extraordinary way that his family business interests are now fully mixed with his plans for governance of the United States.
Mr. Trump opened the unusual news conference on Tuesday by introducing Hussain Sajwani, the founder and chairman of DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based real estate firm that partnered with the Trump family a decade ago to build the first Trump-branded golf course in the Middle East.
Now, Mr. Trump said, DAMAC is planning to invest billions of dollars in the United States to build data centers, with the help of Mr. Trump and the federal government, even while DAMAC continues its role as a Trump business partner.
There too in the room at Mar-a-Lago was Steve Witkoff, who is in business with a new crypto company called World Liberty Financial that both Mr. Trump and his sons helped start. Mr. Witkoff, while still working with the crypto company, is already serving as Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Mr. Witkoff provided an update from the stage on efforts to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Mr. Trump pointed out that one of his sons, Eric Trump, who has been pushing new Trump tower deals in the Middle East, was in the back of the ballroom, as well, on the same day that LIV Golf, the Saudi-financed golf league, disclosed that it intends to host another tournament this year at the Trump National Doral resort near Miami. This means that money tied to the Saudi government will continue to flow to the Trump family, even when Mr. Trump is back in the White House, as LIV Golf is owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
Also on Tuesday, Trump Organization’s other major Middle East business partner, Dar Al Arkan, disclosed that it planned to start building projects in the United States for the first time, according to a report by Reuters. Dar Al Arkan did not respond to a request for comment.
It all comes as Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, recently disclosed that he has raised an additional $1.5 billion from Middle East investors for his private equity company. The firm he started after he left his position in the White House in 2020 now has more than $4.5 billion, mostly from oil-rich sovereign wealth funds.
“This will be the golden age of America — this is the golden age of America,” Mr. Trump said, as he was wrapping up his more than hourlong news conference, not referring to his own family business operations, but his confidence on the future path of the nation. “We’re going to have a great country again.”
The scale of overlap between Mr. Trump’s family members and their business interests, and the government he will lead, all showcased on the same day, underscores how unprecedented the second Trump presidency and the potential for conflicts of interest will be.
“There was at least some concern from the Trump administration during the first term about the optics of financial intermingling between Trump’s businesses and the government,” said Adav Noti, executive director of Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit ethics group. “What we are seeing with the incoming administration is no longer that kind of concern about those optics. There is an impression that the handcuffs are off.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, rejected the criticism.
“President Trump’s family members are highly respected, intelligent individuals who love our country,” she said in a statement. “They have always played an integral role in President Trump’s campaigns and his first administration and have made many personal sacrifices to help their father make America great again.”
Ms. Leavitt also pointed to Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden, who secured millions of dollars worth of contracts while his father was vice president from overseas business executives.
The Trump family has made clear since the election that it does not intend to forswear new international deals as it did in 2017, meaning it will continue to announce new ventures in spots around the world, Eric Trump said in an interview with The New York Times last month.
The family still plans to announce an ethics plan that will include hiring an outside legal adviser that will review these deals, in an attempt to avoid special treatment by companies that may be seeking favors from the United States government. It also has said that it will not be doing new deals directly with foreign governments while Mr. Trump is president.
But the list of new deals has accelerated in recent months as Mr. Trump is poised to take office.
Dar Al Arkan, a Saudi-based real-estate company, disclosed since the middle of last year that it will build new Trump-named towers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Dubai, in addition to a previously planned project in Oman. Dar Al Arkan and its Dar Global subsidiary are private companies, but they have close ties to the Saudi government.
Mr. Kushner, in a podcast last month, disclosed for the first time that he had received $1.5 billion worth of new funding from the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and Abu Dhabi. He said he also had a commitment from Saudi Arabia, which had previously agreed to deliver his firm $2 billion, to extend their agreement to 2029, two years later than the original date.
Mr. Kushner, in the interview, said this move means he avoided conflicts of interest, as he said he had negotiated these new commitments before his father in law was re-elected.
“I made very clear to them that in the event that Trump was elected, that they should not expect anything from me for that,” Mr. Kushner said during the interview, with the podcaster Patrick O’Shaughnessy.
Mr. Kushner and his firm declined on Tuesday to comment on the record about the matter. To date, Affinity Partners, his company, has invested about $2 billion of its funds into firms, including about $129 million into Phoenix Holdings, an Israeli financial services company that has seen its stock value surge since the investment by Affinity.
The plan Mr. Trump announced on Tuesday while at Mar-a-Lago centered around DAMAC, which he said intended to invest $20 billion in the United States “over a very short period of time.” The investment apparently focused on data centers that are needed to handle fast-growing demands coming from cloud computing and artificial intelligence industries.
“We’re very, very excited, now with his leadership and his open strategy and policy to encourage businesses to come to the U.S.,” Mr. Sajwani said, after Mr. Trump invited him to the stage at the start of his news conference. “For the last four years, we’ve been waiting for this moment.”
DAMAC and the Trump Organization are already in business together in Dubai with a first golf course and have plans to build a second, although this project has long been delayed. But in the United States, Mr. Trump said, he intends to use the federal government’s powers to help his family business partner, by offering DAMAC “expedited reviews” of any federal environmental questions that might emerge related to the company’s plans.
“We’re going to move them quickly through the environmental process,” Mr. Trump said, adding that a similar benefit would be offered to any company planning to invest $1 billion in the United States, although DAMAC is the first to get such a promise.
Because Mr. Trump is so close to his children, moves they make attract attention regardless of whether there is a component related to the Trump Organization. For instance, three of Mr. Trump’s incoming government officials posted photos to social media of themselves traveling with Donald Trump Jr., a key political voice with his father, to Greenland, which the president-elect has said he wants the U.S. government to acquire for strategic purposes. Donald Trump Jr. is not joining his father’s government, and did not appear to have held any meetings related to any kind of development.
But the LIV Golf announcement on Tuesday means that the Saudi-financed tournament will be back at Mr. Trump’s Doral resort in April, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at the venue.
The event also drives thousands of ticket-buying fans to the resort, filling up hotel restaurants and guest rooms during the multiday event. LIV events also boost the international profile of the more than a dozen Trump family golf resorts around the world.
“What they’re doing with LIV is very important,” Mr. Trump told The Times at the 2022 competition at Doral, which as of this year will have been used four times by LIV Golf for tournaments. “They’re putting a lot of effort into it and a lot of money into it, as you see.”
Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.
