‘A witches’ brew’: Washington’s ethics establishment reacts to Trump’s $2.2 billion windfall — they’re shocked but not surprised

The disclosure of President Trump’s 2025 income — $2.2 billion, more than $1 billion of it from crypto — is shocking to the old DC establishment. But it’s not surprising. The numbers are categorically different from anything American public life has seen before, and the institutions meant to respond to that fact are largely failing to do so. Every source reached for a historical comparison, and every comparison collapsed under the weight of the current numbers. Norm Eisen, who served as President Obama’s White House ethics czar and is currently chair and co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, called the filings “the most shocking presidential financial disclosures in the history of our country,” adding that “we’ve never seen a president exploit the presidency, exploit the White House in this fashion.” Even this veteran of tracking presidential ethics violations said he was “startled” by the “sheer scope and scale of the corruption here.” When Fortune asked him if he rolled up his sleeves with a hot cup of coffee to go through the filing, Eisen responded that “even the most highly caffeinated coffee beverage would not be enough.” He added that he needed a “stiff drink, it’s outrageous, it makes your blood boil.” (He later clarified that he did not literally have a stiff drink that morning, but would be having one to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.) Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt reached back nearly a century for a comparison and still came up short. “We’ve had scandals in the past, and we’ve had Teapot Dome and on and on,” he told Fortune, referencing the famous early 20th-century corruption scandal involving President William Howard Taft. “But it was frankly nothing [compared to this]. It was small potatoes. This is gigantic numbers.” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Yale management professor, calibrated the scale