US senator says UAE-WorldLibertyFinancial deal could lead to criminal charges

U.S. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy has warned that individuals involved in a deal where a member of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) royal family invested $500 million in WorldLibertyFinancial (WLFI), a DeFi project led by the Trump family, could face criminal charges. According to Decrypt, Murphy stated that a UAE investor secretly provided $187 million to President Donald Trump and $31 million to his Middle East envoy, after which the investor gained access to sensitive U.S. defense technology. He described the act as a violation of decades of national security principles and blatant corruption that should not be normalized. CNBC previously reported that the deal was signed months before the Trump administration approved the export of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors to the UAE. Subsequently, the U.S. permitted the sale of hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips from Nvidia to the UAE.