President Donald Trump’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. faced a blistering rebuke from one of their father’s most reliable allies in American media, after a New York Post editorial published June 29 drew an explicit parallel between the Trump family’s overseas business dealings and the Hunter Biden scandals that Republicans spent years weaponizing against the previous administration.
The editorial board targeted a report that the president’s two sons, along with Kyle Lutnick and Brandon Lutnick — sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — stand to profit from a $1.6 billion tungsten mining deal the U.S. government is financing in Kazakhstan. Eric and Donald Jr. are reportedly co-owners or investors in companies tied to the defense contract, while Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment bank founded by Howard Lutnick and now run by his sons, provides advisory and underwriting services to no fewer than 13 mining firms that have obtained or are seeking significant federal financing or contracts. Howard Lutnick himself has formally stepped away from Cantor Fitzgerald.
Making the arrangement harder to dismiss as routine business: President Trump reportedly called into a meeting between Secretary Lutnick and Kazakhstan’s president while the deal was being finalized.
A Familiar Pattern in an Unfamiliar Place
The editorial board did not soften its language. “It was bad when the Bidens did it, and it’s just as bad when the Trumps do it,” the board wrote. The editorial observed that a president’s family extracting profit from opaque resource companies in former Soviet states carried unmistakable echoes of Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm at the center of Republican attacks during the 2020 election and beyond.
The comparison carries weight precisely because of who is making it. The publication spent years amplifying allegations against the Biden family, helping to keep Hunter Biden’s foreign business entanglements in the public eye. Those House Republican investigations ultimately failed to produce evidence that former President Joe Biden personally profited from his son’s dealings. Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax violations and was separately convicted on gun charges, but the foreign influence-peddling allegations never resulted in charges. Joe Biden pardoned his son in December 2024, citing concern over how the incoming administration might treat the family.
A Sprawling Web of Deals
The Kazakhstan mining contract is far from the only deal raising eyebrows. The Trump family’s financial maneuvering began even before President Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, when an entity connected to the United Arab Emirates acquired a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture run by Eric and Donald Jr. That arrangement routed $187 million to Trump-family interests and an additional $31 million to entities tied to special envoy Steve Witkoff. Since then, a Reuters analysis estimated the family has collected roughly $2.3 billion from digital assets alone.
Real estate has kept pace with crypto. This spring, Eric unveiled plans for Trump Tower Tbilisi, a 70-story skyscraper that would become Georgia’s highest structure in Tbilisi, the nation’s capital city. Among the Georgian business partners involved in the development is a figure with strong connections to pro-Putin billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s dominant oligarch, who is currently under U.S. sanctions for efforts to pull Georgia toward Moscow.
White House Pushes Back
The administration’s response drew a sharp line between the two families. White House spokesperson Kush Desai argued that Joe Biden rose through decades of public office before his relatives became profitable businessmen, while President Trump and his family had built a well-established business empire long before he entered politics. Desai also contended there was no equivalency between Hunter Biden — whom Biden pardoned as one of his final official conduct and the offspring of President Trump or those of other members of his administration.
The editorial board was unmoved by that framing. The Post noted that the Lutnick and Trump sons had been accumulating profits for 18 months, enriching themselves through cryptocurrency arrangements while the very government their fathers oversee was in the process of shaping federal crypto policy.
Democrats Eye the Midterms
Democrats in Congress are already pressing for investigations into the Trump family’s dealings, though House Republicans have shown little appetite for scrutinizing the administration’s conduct. The editorial board warned that the political math could shift quickly, noting that if Democrats reclaim the House in the midterms, formal hearings would almost certainly follow. The piece closed with a direct appeal to President Trump to get ahead of the scandal voluntarily, act with transparency, and resolve the conflicts before they consume the remainder of his term and cement his legacy in ways he would not choose.
Sources:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-favorite-paper-the-new-york-post-tears-into-his-sons-eric-and-donald-jr-over-sleaze-scandal/
https://nypost.com/2026/06/29/opinion/hunter-biden-style-sleeze-is-just-as-slimy-when-the-trump-boys-do-it/
https://nypost.com/2026/06/30/us-news/supreme-court-strikes-down-trump-birthright-citizenship-order-in-blow-to-president/
https://nypost.com/tag/donald-trump-jr/