Trump profits financially from game site sued over child abuse
President Donald Trump maintains financial ties to the gaming website Roblox, as numerous lawsuits accuse it of failing to protect child users from predators.
Trump made 12 stock purchases in the company, eight sales, and earned dividends and capital gains of less than $1,000 each in 2025, according to his newly released financial disclosures. Some of Trump’s Roblox stock purchases ranged from $1,001 to $15,000 or from $50,001 to $100,000, and two sales were valued between $15,001 and $50,000.
Roblox CEO David Baszucki also donated $5 million to Trump’s White House ballroom construction project in 2025, according to a New York Times report and a Democratic senator who met with Baszucki.
While Roblox enjoys seemingly cozy relations with the president, child safety advocates want his administration to investigate the company, and state governments are taking it to court.
Roblox faces pending lawsuits by Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Indiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, alleging that the game systematically enables strangers to exploit children and does not adequately crack down on users sharing child pornography, according to a legal group tracking the cases. Roblox already settled lawsuits from Alabama, Nevada, and West Virginia for a combined $35 million over similar claims, which did not require the company to admit wrongdoing.
The situation is worse for Roblox in the private sector; 162 lawsuits against the platform are now consolidated in federal court from plaintiffs that include alleged child sexual abuse victims and their parents, according to Consumer Notice.
“Roblox’s engagement-maximizing design features, virtual currency system, and voice and text chat communication features are developmentally inappropriate for the platform’s massive young user base and pose a substantial risk of harm,” nine advocacy groups told Trump’s Federal Trade Commission in a May complaint. The document accused Roblox of “deceptive representations” downplaying how unsafe the platform is to parents.
The White House disputed any notion of a conflict of interest in comments to the Washington Examiner.
“This is the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.”
Trump himself pushed back on questions about his finances this week.
“I don’t get involved in my personal. We have funds that run my money,” Trump told reporters Wednesday after the 2025 disclosures revealed he made more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency profits.
“They invest my money. I don’t talk to them. I don’t even speak to them,” he said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission told Bloomberg News in February 2025 that it was investigating Roblox over an undisclosed matter. An SEC spokesperson declined to comment.
Roblox did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s requests for comment. The corporation disputed “erroneous claims and misconceptions” about its safety practices in an August 2025 statement, highlighting advanced AI models and a team of thousands focused on policy enforcement.
“No system is perfect and bad actors adapt to evade detection, including efforts to take users to other platforms, where safety standards and moderation practices may differ,” Roblox said. “We continuously work to block those efforts and to enhance our moderation approaches to promote a safe and enjoyable environment for all users.”
Roblox’s private-sector lawsuits tell stories of an adult user posing as a child and trying to kidnap a five-year-old user he met virtually, men meeting teenage girls in-person to rape them after gaining their trust on the site, and other incidents. The company is reportedly battling with attorneys to try pushing child sexual abuse lawsuits into arbitration, a process that would conceal the cases from the public, citing the terms of service users agree to when they enter the game. Plaintiffs argue federal law prohibits Roblox from using this tactic on sexual abuse victims.
Federal prosecutors have also prosecuted several Roblox users tied to Satanist-inspired cults that befriend children online and coerce them into harming themselves or performing sexual acts on camera.
Before its CEO’s $5 million ballroom donation, Roblox showed friendliness toward the Trump administration in September by endorsing the “Presidential AI Challenge,” Trump’s program offering incentives for students and educators to complete innovative AI projects.
“Roblox is proud to support this executive order and work with the Administration to advance AI education,” the platform said in a statement featured on the White House website.