A Circle Internet Group shareholder has sued President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff over two UAE-linked cryptocurrency transactions. The derivative lawsuit alleges that payments connected to World Liberty violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause while giving its USD1 stablecoin an unfair competitive advantage over Circle’s USDC.
According to a Bloomberg Law report on the October 22 filing, J. Benjamin Greenberg brought the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia as a Circle shareholder and former employee. Greenberg is attempting to pursue claims on Circle’s behalf rather than representing an action initiated by the company itself, and Circle has explicitly said it did not direct, authorize or participate in the filing.
The complaint identifies two transactions involving entities connected to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser. The first was a $500 million agreement for a 49% stake in World Liberty, while the second involved MGX’s $2 billion Binance investment settled using World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin.
Lawsuit Connects UAE Deals to Circle Competition
The $500 million investment was agreed four days before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, according to The Wall Street Journal. The complaint argues that proceeds reaching Trump-affiliated interests after he entered office constituted an impermissible foreign benefit, an allegation the defendants dispute.
The second transaction occurred when Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX used $2 billion in USD1 to complete its investment in Binance. Greenberg alleges that the transaction artificially strengthened USD1 and diverted stablecoin business that could otherwise have flowed to Circle and USDC, turning the constitutional claim into a shareholder allegation of commercial harm.
That competitive argument arrives as USDC faces a changing U.S. stablecoin market. Stablecoin market share depends on liquidity, distribution and integrations as well as regulatory positioning, so establishing that a specific World Liberty transaction legally caused compensable harm to Circle would require the plaintiff to prove more than the existence of competing products.
Greenberg seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, an accounting of alleged foreign payments, disgorgement of gains deemed unlawful and monetary damages. Those requested remedies remain claims before the court rather than restrictions currently imposed on Trump, Witkoff or World Liberty.
Defendants Reject Emoluments and Conflict Claims
The White House has rejected the allegations, describing the case as frivolous and maintaining that Trump has no conflict of interest arising from his cryptocurrency holdings. World Liberty similarly said it complies with U.S. law and considers the claims meritless. No court has yet determined that either UAE-linked transaction constituted a foreign emolument or unlawful payment.
The dispute adds another legal dimension to World Liberty’s growing role in dollar stablecoins. The company has expanded USD1 while U.S. policymakers separately consider greater international use of regulated dollar stablecoins, creating a broader policy backdrop in which private stablecoin businesses increasingly intersect with federal financial strategy.
World Liberty has also attracted scrutiny beyond USD1, including governance and ownership questions surrounding its WLFI token structure. Those separate market developments do not establish the constitutional allegations in Greenberg’s case, but they illustrate the expanding financial footprint against which the lawsuit will be litigated.
The immediate significance is therefore procedural rather than a finding of wrongdoing. A Circle shareholder has placed World Liberty’s UAE relationships, USD1 competition and the President’s financial interests before a federal court, but the central constitutional and commercial claims remain untested allegations at the opening stage of litigation.
