Trump Crypto Founders Bankrolled Ramaswamy As He Pushes To Invest Ohio Public Funds In Bitcoin
In the seven weeks after Vivek Ramaswamy won Ohio’s Republican primary for governor, his campaign collected the legal maximum donation — $16,615 apiece — from a tight circle of people with one thing in common: they built the cryptocurrency company that has made the family of President Donald Trump more than a billion dollars.
The donors include Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, the two entrepreneurs who founded World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture; their spouses; and Zachary Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder and the son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. The chief executive of Paxos, a major stablecoin company, gave the maximum the same day.
Together, the cluster routed roughly $116,000 into Ramaswamy’s campaign account, nearly all of it on May 5 — primary day — or the morning after, according to the post-primary campaign-finance report his committee filed with the Ohio Secretary of State ahead of Friday’s deadline.
Ohio’s five pension systems hold roughly a quarter-trillion dollars in assets. The governor does not control them outright, but appoints an investment-expert trustee to each board — and a provision slipped into the 2025 state budget shifted the teachers’ pension board toward a majority of government appointees.