Trump says he "didn't hear about it then." The reporting says he heard twice, took no action, and kept approving chip sales to China.
BREAKING | By Joseph J. Jackson | WASHINGTON (Nov. 11, 2026)
Updated Wednesday evening, Nov. 11, 2026.
UPDATE: Nvidia's board is preparing to oust Huang. The board could meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. No decision has been announced.
The Journal's report came hours after The New York Times reported that Huang also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company. Nvidia declined to comment to the Times. Nvidia shares fell more than 3% in after-hours trading on the report, CNBC reported.
Earlier Wednesday, Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota called on Huang to resign. "The potential for extortion is so tremendous," Cramer told Politico, Reuters reported. Trump called Huang "an honorable guy" on Sunday. FMNN found no White House response to the new reports as of this update.
The original story, on what Trump was told and when, follows.
The short version
The New York Times reports Trump was first told about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with suspected Chinese intelligence asset Alice Huang in late 2025, and "chose to take no action."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed him again on Air Force One in May 2026, as Trump brought Huang along to Beijing. A U.S. official confirmed that briefing to the Times.
On Monday, Trump said "I didn't hear about it then." Minutes later he said it "could have been mentioned" but "didn't make much of an impact on me."
President Donald Trump says he did not know. The record, as reported so far, says he was told at least twice.
At a White House news conference Monday, Trump was asked whether he knew about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with a suspected Chinese spy before he brought Huang to Beijing in May. "No, I didn't hear about it then," he said, according to the Associated Press. He said he learned "not too long ago."
Then he hedged. "They could have been mentioned. Certainly, it didn't make much of an impact on me," Trump said, adding that he would "check with the intelligence people."
The New York Times reported a different sequence.
Warning No. 1: late 2025
The Times first reported Oct. 29 that U.S. intelligence agencies had monitored Alice Huang, a former executive at the Singapore chip buyer Megaspeed, over concerns she was passing information to Beijing. Intercepted communications showed an intimate relationship with an American whose name was masked; an unmasking request identified him as Jensen Huang, Anadolu reported, citing the Times.
When Trump was first briefed "late last fall," he "chose to take no action," the Times reported Nov. 10. The paper said he was wary of disrupting Nvidia's sales and trade with China. Forbes summarized the Oct. 29 report the same way: Trump was briefed and did nothing. The exact date and who gave that briefing have not been reported.
Huang himself never received a defensive briefing warning him about her, according to the Times.
Warning No. 2: Air Force One, May 2026
This spring, Rubio, who serves as both secretary of state and national security adviser, oversaw a classified memo on the relationship. It went to a small group of top officials before Trump's May 13–15 trip to China, Axios reported. Huang was left off the original delegation.
After his absence made headlines, Trump invited Huang aboard Air Force One at a refueling stop in Alaska and posted that "Jensen is currently on Air Force One." Rubio learned Huang was joining and "briefed the president on the issue," a U.S. official told the Times. Trump "was not particularly moved," the paper reported. Per the Times, the memo itself was not meant for Trump and was not shown to him on the plane.
The White House, commenting only on background, disputed the Times account "without elaborating," the paper reported. It has offered no on-record timeline.
What happened after the warnings
The early China chip decisions, the July 2025 restart of Nvidia's H20 sales and the August deal giving the government 15% of that revenue, appear to predate any briefing.
What came after is a longer list:
Dec. 8, 2025: Trump announced on Truth Social that Nvidia could ship its more powerful H200 chips to "approved customers" in China, with 25% going to the U.S. That likely came after the "late fall" briefing, though no source has fixed the order.
January–February 2026: Commerce opened case-by-case H200 licensing, and Nvidia disclosed its first H200 license.
May 12–15, 2026: Trump brought Huang to Beijing. On May 14, Reuters reported that about 10 Chinese firms had been cleared to buy H200s.
Oct. 8, 2026: Trump presented Huang with the National Medal of Science.
Separately, the Times reported that a Commerce Department probe of Megaspeed was paused after Nvidia's general counsel contacted the agents in August 2025, and the case moved to a Justice Department criminal inquiry, TNW reported. Commerce says it acted "strictly by the book." Megaspeed, which denies smuggling, is still not on the Commerce Entity List. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in a Situation Room meeting why not, Axios reported; Commerce denies the exchange happened.
There is no public evidence that the relationship drove any specific export decision, and officials initially judged Jensen Huang unaware of Alice Huang's alleged intelligence work. The question is not whether one affair set chip policy. It is why a president warned twice about a counterintelligence risk around his top chip adviser kept that adviser at his side, kept approving that adviser's China sales, and, by every account so far, asked for nothing.
Trump said Monday the FBI is "looking into it in terms of something else." He did not say what, and the reporting shows no sign he ordered any inquiry after either warning.
What Trump has said
On Sunday, Trump called Huang "an honorable guy" and said "he probably has an excuse for it," Reuters reported. Asked whether he regretted not acting on the intelligence, he said, "I don't think so."
On Monday, he said he asked Huang directly. "He said, 'I had no idea that she was a spy,' and I really believe him," Trump said, CNBC reported. Huang will not join Trump's China trip next week.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it "a dereliction of duty," Benzinga reported. House Democrats Gregory Meeks, Gabe Amo and Sydney Kamlager-Dove asked Lutnick to halt advanced-chip exports to China and say what he knew, with answers due Dec. 1. Three House Republican chairs want Huang in a closed-door briefing Nov. 18; their letter asks about Nvidia's security, not about what the White House knew.
China's Foreign Ministry called the spy allegation "nothing but smears."
We've seen this move before
In July 2024, Trump posted, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it." Its authors included his former officials. Russell Vought, one of its architects, became his budget director, and in October 2025 Trump himself called Vought "he of PROJECT 2025 Fame." By February 2026, a Center for Progressive Reform tracker counted 283 of 532 tracked recommendations started or completed.
The pattern is the same: first "I knew nothing," then "it didn't make an impact." The Huang record is thinner. Most of it rests on anonymous officials in one outlet, partly backed by Axios and CNN, and the exact briefing dates are still secret. That is exactly why the dates matter.
Questions that still need answers
When exactly was Trump first briefed, by whom, and was it before the Dec. 8 H200 announcement?
Did anyone recommend keeping Huang off the Beijing trip?
Why did Huang never get a defensive briefing?
Why is Megaspeed still off the Entity List?
What is the FBI's "something else"?
FMNN will update this story after Nvidia's Nov. 17 earnings and the Nov. 18 congressional briefing.
Sources
Wall Street Journal via Devdiscourse, Nov. 11 (board preparing to oust Huang)
New York Times and WSJ headlines via Techmeme, Nov. 11 (Powell report)
Photo: Nvidia GK107 GPU chip. Phiarc via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.