Just over a week after U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran in late February, a publicly traded Florida golf course company announced an unusual plan: a reverse merger to take a barely year-old drone startup public. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were part owners of the golf course company; now, they are backers of the drone startup. Seven weeks later, after a demonstration in Arizona, the Air Force placed a limited order for the startup’s interceptor drones.

It was not an isolated move.

Since their father won a second term, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — President Donald Trump’s two eldest sons, neither of whom hold official roles in the administration — have become linked to investments in at least 10 companies with military applications. Those firms have collectively received about $3.7 billion in federal funds since the start of the second Trump administration, according to an MS NOW review of public records. Three hit record levels of Defense Department funding within the last year.

Over the equivalent timespan at the end of the Biden administration, those same companies took in nearly $2.8 billion in federal contracts. Three had no federal contracts at all before Trump’s second term — including the drone startup, founded in 2025.

The brothers’ financial ties to companies their father’s government funds has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest within the Trump family, given the brothers’ business investments and their proximity to the leader of the world’s most powerful military. Since late February, the president has put that power to use in a costly war with Iran — driving up defense spending at the very moment his sons were building new positions in the sector.

“The president has now fought a war over the past few months that appears we didn’t get much for,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush.

Trump’s sons are “profiting from this defense budget,” Painter said, “which makes the situation even worse and undermines public confidence.”

Spokesmen for the brothers said they play no role in awarding or managing the contracts. 

Donald Trump Jr. “doesn’t interface with the Federal Government as part of his role for any company that he invests in or advises and had nothing to do with any of these contracts,” said spokesman Andy Surabian.

A spokesperson for Eric Trump said he “is a passive investor with absolutely no involvement in the day-to-day operations, strategic decisions, management, or any activities of these companies. He has no role whatsoever in the awarding, oversight, or management of any government contracts.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly responded to questions about the defense contractor ties of the Trump brothers, calling it “the same tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade.”

The president, she continued, “only acts in the best interests of the American public.”

The investments coincide with a surge in military spending. Trump has moved to modernize the U.S. arsenal and directed federal officials to shift resources toward some of the very sectors his sons have bet on: drones, rare-earth magnets and battlefield robotics.

“I built the military and rebuilt it and made it very strong in my first administration,” Trump said at a summit of Latin American nations in March. “Now, we are using it.”

‘Drone dominance’ 

Both sons have invested in American drone manufacturers at a time when the Pentagon has significantly increased purchases of advanced drone systems — a shift accelerated by lessons from the war in Ukraine.

In June 2025, the president signed an executive order titled “Unleashing American Drone Dominance,” directing the United States to “accelerate the safe commercialization of drone technologies” and reduce “reliance on foreign sources.” The order came after the Federal Communications Commission last year banned new models from Chinese drone manufacturers even for civilian use, spurring demand for American-made alternatives. 

Donald Trump Jr. has been a vocal supporter of that shift. In August 2024, he and his brother were named honorary chairs on the Trump-Vance transition team, and one month earlier, he told Axios he wanted “veto power” to block “bad actors” from administration positions — though he said he wanted to leave final hiring decisions up to others. It’s not clear when he and Eric Trump left their roles. 

In a September 2025 episode of his podcast, “Triggered with Donald Trump Jr.,” he recalled the transition team interviewing candidates for top jobs at the Pentagon, suggesting that some prospects for secretary of the Air Force were reluctant to shift toward drones rather than “old” fighter jets. 

“Are they better served with a drone that costs, you know, a tiny fraction of that of a plane?” he said. “Are they adapting these new technologies fast enough to make a difference? Because our competitors probably are.”

Greg Williams, a military spending expert at the Project on Government Oversight, noted that there have been many unexplained firings at the Pentagon that raise questions about “whether one gets and keeps one’s job exclusively on the basis of merit.”

“It’s reasonable to be concerned that the employees of the Department of Defense may be worried about what it takes to keep their jobs, and somebody who has that worry would naturally think about whether their actions align with the perceived preferences of the president and his close circle of friends and family,” Williams said. 

Donald Trump Jr. has been on the advisory board of drone maker Unusual Machines since November 2024, shortly after his father was re-elected. If he holds the same number of shares as when he joined, his stake is now worth roughly $7.9 million as of July 1. In October 2025, the Army placed its largest-ever order from the company, buying thousands of drone motors, CEO Allan Evans said at the time. The Wall Street Journal reported the following May that Unusual Machines was in talks with the administration to secure potential new federal funding, sending its stock price soaring. The company, headquartered in Florida, could not be reached after multiple requests for comment.

In February 2026, Eric Trump invested in a pending merger between Xtend, an Israeli-founded drone company, and JFB Construction Holdings, a Florida-based construction firm. The deal, which is awaiting federal regulatory approval, would take the AI-powered drone maker public. Xtend, a Pentagon contractor since 2020, was tapped in May to compete in the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program, which intends to purchase $1.1 billion worth of one-way attack drones by 2027. Unusual Machines is also an investor in the Xtend-JFB merger. Xtend did not respond to requests for comment.

Both sons invested in Powerus, a Florida-based drone startup founded in 2025, through a proposed reverse merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, the Nasdaq-listed golf course company they partly own. The announcement came shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026. In April, co-founder Brett Velicovich told The Associated Press that the company was looking to sell interceptors to Gulf nations for defense against Iranian attacks. Later that month, Powerus announced the U.S. Air Force had placed a “limited” order for its interceptor drones for an undisclosed amount. In May, it too was selected to participate in the Drone Dominance Program.

In a statement to MS NOW, Velicovich said the company does not comment on the details of its government contracts or on investor relationships beyond public filings.

“Procurement decisions are made by the government through a rigorous, merit-based process,” Velicovich said, adding that the urgency to develop drone systems is “documented, and bipartisan.”

American Ventures, the private investment arm of Dominari Holdings, a financial services company where Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump serve on the advisory board, invested in both the Powerus and Xtend mergers.

‘We understand what the administration wants to do’

The brothers’ military-tech interests extend beyond drones, including Donald Trump Jr.’s role at 1789 Capital, an “America first” venture capital firm where he has been a partner since mid-November 2024. 

At an investor forum in October 2025, Donald Trump Jr. cast his understanding of his father’s goals in the White House as a selling point for the firm.

“We understand what the administration wants to do, because we helped craft some of that messaging,” he said. “We can be on the outside, but still have that understanding of what they plan to do, and that’s logical.”

The firm holds stakes in several national security and aerospace businesses — areas the administration has prioritized. While Donald Trump Jr. shares his input on strategy with other partners, he is not on 1789 Capital’s investment committee that makes final decisions on what to invest in, according to a person familiar with the firm’s structure, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The fund only takes minority stakes in companies, the person noted. 

“There are zero conflicts at 1789 — where no one has ever served in government — unlike the clear conflicts of top-level Democrats who have specifically monetized their government experience,” a company spokesperson told MS NOW, before criticizing individual former Democratic officials who went into the private sector, or moved between government and industry. “Where was all the handwringing when conflicts abounded for these most senior-level Democrats?”

The dynamic has nonetheless drawn scrutiny. In August 2025, 1789 Capital invested in Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnets manufacturer. That November, the Pentagon offered the company a $620 million direct loan — an amount roughly double the company’s valuation at the time, and, according to Democratic lawmakers demanding answers from the White House, the largest-ever award granted by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital. The same month, the Commerce Department took $50 million in company equity in exchange for CHIPS Act incentives.

A Vulcan spokesperson said the company “did not ask or solicit its investors to facilitate the Pentagon loan announced in November,” noted that the company received its first three Pentagon contracts in 2024 under former President Joe Biden and said it plans to use the loan to build “the largest magnet plant in the world outside of China.” 

Since 2025, at least five other 1789 Capital-backed companies have received new multimillion-dollar federal contracts, including Elon Musk’s Space X, defense tech firm Anduril Industries, chipmaker Cerebras Systems, rocket manufacturer Firehawk Aerospace and computing firm PsiQuantum — though each held federal contracts of varying sizes prior to the president’s second term.

SpaceX, a federal contractor since 2008, did not respond to a request for comment. Firehawk Aerospace CEO Will Edwards called 1789 Capital “an incredible partner.” Cerebras Systems declined to comment. A PsiQuantum spokesperson said the company is “committed to close, effective, and responsible [government] partnerships.” 

Among them, Anduril stands out for its size. It landed a contract with the Army in March 2026 valued at up to $20 billion over the next decade. Company co-founder Palmer Luckey is a Trump donor who has avidly backed the president since 2020, and the company’s principal investor is a venture firm run by Peter Thiel, a major Trump supporter and ally of Vice President JD Vance. Anduril did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Eric Trump’s reach extends to robotics. He was named chief strategy adviser to Foundation Future Industries in March 2026, though he had invested earlier, a spokesperson for the company told CNBC. In April, the company announced on Fox Business that it had secured $24 million in Defense Department contracts to test its humanoid robots, including for potential battlefield use.

“Eric Trump did not play a role in acquiring or securing contracts,” company spokeswoman Margaret Skowronska told MS NOW in an email.

The family’s investments in the defense sector run to the president himself. Financial disclosures show that in March 2026, the president invested between $247,000 and $630,000 in Palantir — the data and tech firm led by major Trump donor Alex Karp, and which Thiel founded and chairs — though he also sold $1.1 million of the stock. In April 2026, the president touted Palantir’s stock on Truth Social: “Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies!!!” 

The president’s assets are held in a trust managed by his children, according to the White House. The Trump Organization has said neither the president nor his children play a role in stock transactions.

Richard Aboulafia, an industry analyst, noted that the bulk of the Pentagon’s investments in new weapons continues to flow to legacy companies. Still, “it is amazing how much money they’re throwing at the new players,” like Anduril and Palantir, that he said “have these very strong political connections, these pipelines, to the White House.”

“I tried to think of a precedent — did FDR send a telegram in World War 2 saying, ‘Grumman Aircraft (GRM) makes awesome planes. Just ask our enemies!!!’?” Aboulafia wrote in his April newsletter. “He did not.”

Congressional accountability

The federal government has limited tools to identify potential conflicts of interest. A group of Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has written to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seeking information about whether contracts linked to the Trump family “may have been affected by conflicts of interest.” In one such letter, the lawmakers wrote that the department told them it relies primarily on reviewing the financial disclosures of federal employees — which does not include the president’s sons.

The Pentagon “appears to be oblivious to — and therefore unable to address — the potential for corruption created by the Trump family’s investments in companies that stand to benefit financially from taxpayer-funded, [Department Department] contracts,” the lawmakers wrote.

Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez told MS NOW that the department “maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes financial disclosure reviews, divestitures where appropriate, and screening to prevent conflicts of interest” in a statement.

“We are in full compliance with all ethical laws and regulations. Any claims otherwise are false,” he added.

The brothers once touted a wall separating their family business interests and the government.

In a 2018 interview, Donald Trump Jr. said the Trump Organization “got no credit” for “doing the right thing” by self-imposing restrictions on its private foreign investments during the his father’s first term. 

The Trump Organization dropped that policy for the president’s second term. Eric Trump expressed similar sentiments in the run-up to the 2024 election, saying that the family got “little credit” for trying to insulate its business interests from the government.

Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer during Bush’s presidency, said no law bars a president’s family members from investing in companies with government interests. But past administrations have placed informal restrictions on such relationships that stop short of being codified in law.

During the Bush administration, Painter said, there was a “No Bushes” rule, meaning that interactions between relatives or affiliates of the Bush family and political appointees were largely avoided unless cleared by lawyers.

“President Trump should do the same,” Painter said.

When asked, the White House did not say what legal guidance, if any, it gives political appointees.

“We’ve been able to, by and large, count on previous presidents to avoid such conflicts of interest, because it would have amounted to political suicide for them to engage in these kinds of obvious, flagrant, extraordinarily problematic conflicts of interest,” said Williams, the military spending expert with the Project on Government Oversight. “For reasons only he can speak to, President Trump has chosen not to avoid those conflicts of interest.”

Soorin Kim contributed to this article. 

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