Nvidia: Huang affair could become Trump scandal

Jensen Huang's affair with a woman the US intelligence community believes is a Chinese spy is raising more and more questions in Washington. The most important: What did President Donald Trump know? When did he know? And how did he react to that?

There are increasing calls for clarification in Congress. The matter has the potential to be the biggest US national security scandal in decades.

Trump had such a close relationship with no other company boss as he did with Huang, and Nvidia benefited from it. CNN reporter Phil Mattingly compared the two men's publicly known conversations and Trump administration decisions and overlaid the sequence.

The result: You can literally understand how a personal meeting with the president leads to a decision within a few hours or the next day "that directly affects Nvidia's bottom line, products or business processes - exactly as Jensen had hoped."

Export controls ordered under Biden

The entrepreneur's interest was to sell as many chips as possible abroad, including China. The Biden government had severely restricted the export of high-performance chips there. Gautan Mukunda of the Yale School of Management at Bloomberg says: "It's clear that Nvidia has used its significant lobbying power and influence over the Trump administration - including a $25 million donation to Trump's ballroom - to essentially get the Trump administration to look the other way and not enforce export control laws."

This is a scandal, says Mukunda, in which both Nvidia and the Trump administration are involved. The suspected Chinese spy with whom Huang had an affair is herself a businesswoman. It may have played a role in the export of chips from the USA to China.

What did Trump know?

The New York Times reports: Trump was informed of Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy at least twice, most recently in May by his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio. But the president denies having been informed, saying on Monday he hasn't heard "about it," other people have, and Huang denies it, according to Trump.

For more than a year, the US government has been earning money from Nvidia, according to the president's wishes: when a certain chip is sold to China, the state receives at least 15 percent of the revenue. Trump himself owns shares in Nvidia. This year alone, papers were purchased for him five times, each worth at least $100,000 and up to five million dollars.

Many questions unanswered

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton tells CNN he now has a lot of questions:

Some Republicans are also already calling for clarification. And two Democratic senators wrote to demand that the government preserve all relevant documents for possible investigations.