For most of history, information-seeking letters from lawmakers to individuals and companies that have potentially engaged in unsavory or even illegal practices have had a dry tone. At best, they might use language that shows the reader this is serious business and that alarm bells should be going off. But typically, they’re difficult to get through without one’s eyes glazing over. That was not the case with the message sent by Congressman Jamie Raskin to the leadership of 1789 Capital Management late last week, the premise of which was, essentially: Your venture capital firm sucked until Donald Trump Jr. became a partner and is now managing billions and posting eye-popping returns. Do you honestly expect people to believe it’s because the president’s adult son, the one both relatives and nonrelatives have called an idiot, is some kind of investing savant?
No, really: Over eight delightfully snarky pages addressed to Omeed Malik (1789’s co-founder and president), Christopher Buskirk (1789’s co-founder and chief investment officer), and Trump Jr. (a 1789 partner), Raskin laid out his reasons why it is “impossible to believe that your firm’s astonishing growth and success are due to anything other than insider political influence and thoroughgoing corruption.” According to the lawmaker from Maryland, those reasons for disbelief include but are not limited to the below facts:
- Just two years ago, 1789 Capital Management was “a struggling venture capital firm that earned consistently disappointing results by serially investing in total market flops,” including a start-up pitched as the “anti-woke Amazon,” which “lost 97 percent of its value after 1789 Capital took it public.”
- The firm suddenly gained “the Midas touch” after Donald Trump was reelected for a second time, and, crucially, Trump Jr. was made a partner.
- Junior was “an unlikely choice to originate investments for an upstart venture-capital company” given that his “rare” solo ventures “outside the paternal eye of the Trump Organization — have been well-documented flops, including investing in dry oil wells, hydroponic lettuce farms, and an African mining company.”
- Nevertheless, “1789 Capital reportedly has over $3 billion in assets under management, with its main investment fund generating roughly a 200 percent return as of June 30, 2026. This eye-popping and enviable rate of return is ten times the average return for peer venture-capital firms founded in 2023.”
- “A trio of businessmen with heretofore lackluster records in the market” is now “running the hottest firm in the United States, picking out with almost clairvoyant accuracy winner after winner by investing in companies that would soon come to win hugely lucrative federal-government contracts and grants and favorable regulatory actions.”
Raskin wonders, “How did this miraculous transformation in the fortunes of your LLC come about? Was it indeed magic? Or was it rank corruption, a toxic blend of trading on insider knowledge and the use of insider political influence to steer major federal contracts and other financial benefits to Donald Trump Jr.’s new favorite businesses?” If you’ve been picking up on the sarcasm, you can probably guess that the congressman believes it is not, in fact, a matter of magic. He then lays out a case study, detailing how rare-earth company Vulcan Elements went from “a small start-up with no active manufacturing facilities and no history of fulfilling government contracts” to “raking in federal dollars” after an investment from 1789 Capital, which scored a 900 percent return in the process.
After highlighting “three additional companies with strikingly similar success” (Anduril Industries, Juul, Polymarket) and noting that “the list of 1789 Capital portfolio companies that have benefited from favorable administration decisions is too long to explore in full,” Raskin concludes by requesting, by September 9, a list of companies that 1789 has invested in; communications between the firm’s officers, employees, or contractors and federal-government officials; records reflecting “government actions, policies, or contracts that might affect 1789 Capital or one of its portfolio companies”; due diligence 1789 Capital performed on companies it invested in; and “records reflecting the decision to hire, employ, or otherwise establish a relationship with Donald Trump Jr.”
In a statement, 1789’s counsel told MS NOW, “Repackaging press clippings on congressional letterhead does not turn news headlines into evidence, and that practice is a hallmark of partisan stunts and politically motivated harassment, not oversight.” He called Raskin’s allegations “unsubstantiated talking points.”
Like his father, Trump Jr. seems to have adopted the idea that conflicts of interests do not exist and that he can invest in anything he pleases. In an interview with the New York Times in July, for a story about 1789’s exceptionally successful investments — including Polymarket, the prediction platform that had been barred from operating in the U.S. in 2022 and was subsequently unbarred last year — Trump Jr. said, of Polymarket’s CEO, “He just took sort of the approach that we did, which is like, ‘Fuck all you guys.’” In the same story, the Times noted that Trump Jr. and Malik both “openly embrace their connections to President Trump’s broader circle of donors, influential supporters, and high-ranking officials, but they scoff at questions of whether any of their success comes from direct access to the president.” The First Son maintained that he is a private citizen and has done nothing illegal, adding that he only talks to his dad “every few weeks” and never discusses business. (He did not point to the fact that his father didn’t attend his wedding as evidence that he’s not getting inside information.)
Less helpfully, during a recent interview with CNBC, President Trump declared that “because the presidency is so powerful,” his children “have inside information” about basically everything. Last week, the Times reported that during a private retreat in the spring, Trump Jr. urged Republican attorneys general not to go after prediction markets. (In addition to Polymarket, Trump Jr. is an adviser to and an investor in Kalshi.)
Unfortunately for Raskin, it seems pretty, pretty unlikely that Trump Jr. and his colleagues plan to cooperate with the probe, and given his party’s minority position at the moment, he lacks subpoena power. Of course, that could also change after November, at which time there is probably zero chance of Dems not doing a deep dive on 1789 Capital, in addition to the many other lucrative investments made by Trump’s children, including in the crypto space, mining, and that private island.
