A software engineer and shareholder of Circle Internet Group has filed a lawsuit against US President Donald Trump, accusing him of receiving payments through questionable cryptocurrency deals that allegedly boosted the circulation of his stablecoin.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington by J. Benjamin Greenberg, also names Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East special envoy, as a defendant in his official capacity.
Greenberg, who owns approximately 10,000 shares in Circle, brought the case on behalf of the company through a shareholder derivative suit, a legal action that allows a shareholder to pursue claims over alleged wrongdoing affecting a corporation.
“The corrupt purchase handed President Trump millions of dollars in interest and dramatically expanded the circulation of his stablecoin overnight,” the lawsuit says.
However, Circle distanced itself from the legal action, stating that it did not initiate or authorise the filing.
“Circle did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing,” a company spokesperson said. “We do not comment on pending litigation.”
Greenberg is asking the court to recover payments Trump allegedly received from the transactions under scrutiny. He is also seeking an order compelling the president to disclose any other cryptocurrency payments he may have received from foreign sources, alongside unspecified damages.
The lawsuit argues that the use of cryptocurrency-related business arrangements does not change the nature of the alleged conduct, which it characterises as corruption involving a public official and a foreign power.
“Although the President has dressed his corrupt arrangements in the language of new technology — tokens and stablecoins, holding companies and reserve yields,” the lawsuit says, “that vocabulary must not obscure what this is: the oldest form of public corruption, a public official taking money from a foreign power.”
