Trump Jr.'s defense crumbles as  'remarkable non-answer' exposed in dubious $500M deal

Donald Trump Jr. had no valid excuse when trying to defend the crypto firm he helped found taking in a $500 million investment from a company tied to the United Arab Emirates, David Kirkpatrick of The New Yorker told CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday.

This comes after the firm, World Liberty Financial, issued a statement to CNN denying any link between the Emirati investment and a controversial agreement to render chips to the Middle Eastern country.

"Any claim that this deal had anything to do with the administration's actions on chips is 100 percent false," the company said.

"Steve Witkoff is the president's top envoy in the Middle East, and his sons are also on the board of World Liberty Financial, along with Trump's sons," said Tapper, turning to Kirkpatrick, who has extensively covered the Trump family's financial conflicts. "David, what do you make of Donald Trump Jr.'s defense there?"

"Yeah, it was a remarkable non-answer," said Kirkpatrick. "You know the question is, did the president know that four days before the inauguration, he had just received a huge financial payment from the Emiratis, an investment that is so hard to value. It looks very much like a gift that ... would constitute a conflict of interest. And he didn't really speak to that."

Besides that, Kirkpatrick said, it raises red flags that the deal "wasn't disclosed."

"In fact, the company seems to have taken some actions to keep it hidden almost all of the other Trump investments, which, you know, in many ways have raised a lot of questions about potential conflicts of interest or exploiting the president's personal profit," said Kirkpatrick. "He announces those with a press release. This is the only one, to my knowledge, that they have tried to hide. And you have to wonder why."

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