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corruption
'Release the Names': Raskin Opens Probe Into Trump's Corrupt Meme Coin Dinner
"We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal," said the congressman.
May 29, 2025
Calling U.S. President Donald Trump's recent dinner with cryptocurrency investors "the latest in a bewildering gamut of schemes" aimed at making a profit off the presidency, Rep. Jamie Raskin is demanding the White House release the names of those who attended the event—warning that Americans currently don't know whether foreign governments, criminal enterprises, or other groups may have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for Trump's meme coin.
Trump held an "intimate private dinner" with the top 220 holders of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency memecoin, which has no underlying value but nonetheless reached $14 billion in market value after the president announced its release just before his inauguration.
The coin quickly collapsed and lost 90% of its value, but surged by more than 50% after Trump announced the May 22 dinner at his golf club outside Washington, D.C.
Little is known about many of the top purchasers of the coin, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, which found 28 untraceable "ghost wallets" were behind some purchases. About half of the top 220 owners received coins from crypto exchanges that reject U.S.-based customers, suggesting they could be foreign buyers.
"A close analysis of the top buyers on the 'leaderboard' on the website of $TRUMP shows that a majority of the attendees appear to be foreign nationals who purchased the token through offshore cryptocurrency exchanges that prohibit U.S. customers from participating," wrote Raskin (D-Md.). "Analysis reveals that 161 of the 220 top buyers, or 73% of the invitees, are likely foreign nationals. Among the top 25 'VIP' guests who were offered additional private access to you, including a 'VIP White House tour'—and who each spent between $1.25 million and $16 million on $TRUMP tokens—23 out of 25 are likely foreign individuals or entities."
The congressman also asked what steps the White House had taken to determine the source of funds used by purchasers to pay for the coin, noting that if the money came from foreign governments, the purchasers could be seeking to influence the president.
"I write today to demand that you release the names of all the attendees at this dinner and provide information about the source of the money they each used to buy $TRUMP coins, so that we can prevent illegal foreign government emoluments from being pocketed without congressional consent," wrote Raskin. "Publication of this list will also let the American people know who is putting tens of millions of dollars into our president's pocket so we can start to figure out what—beyond virtually worthless memecoins—they are getting in exchange for all this money."
The Trump Organization, the president's family business, operates the meme coin along with a company registered in Delaware and run by Trump ally Bill Zanker. The two companies own 80% of the 1 billion $TRUMP coins, have received $312 million from crypto sales since Trump took office, and profited from the coin sales at the dinner, in which buyers were not subject to disclosure requirements as they would be for campaign donations.
Raskin pointed to one attendee and buyer whose identity is known—Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun—as more evidence of corruption at the dinner. Sun was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year for illegally distributing billions of crypto assets and concealing payments to celebrity endorsers to promote his cryptocurrency. The charges were dropped after Sun purchased $75 million in another Trump crypto venture. Sun reportedly bought $23 million in $TRUMP coins.
When asked last week whether the White House would release the names of dinner attendees, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she would "raise that question" but claimed the event was one that Trump attended "in his personal time" and not in an official capacity.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, applauded Raskin for opening the investigation. During both of Trump's terms, CREW has demanded accountability for Trump's alleged violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments.
"Your White House has repeatedly promised a presidency that is the 'most transparent and accessible' in American history," wrote Raskin to the president. "But so far, you have failed to deliver, refusing to divulge even the names of the largely foreign attendees at your world-famous crypto dinner. The American people deserve better and, given our constitutional strictures against foreign government money going to our president, this is a matter of great urgency and importance. We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal, rather than the proceeds from foreign states or monarchs or illegal activities."
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Trump Media Reportedly Plans to Raise $3 Billion to Buy Cryptocurrencies
"So much corruption and all out in the open," said one economist.
May 26, 2025
Monday reporting from the Financial Times that U.S. President Donald Trump's family media company "plans to raise $3 billion to buy cryptocurrencies" sparked a fresh wave of alarm over his administration's policies and potential corruption.
After winning a second term last year, the Republican president transferred his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG)—which is behind the Truth Social platform—to a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump Jr.
Citing six unnamed sources, FT reported that TMTG "aims to raise $2 billion in fresh equity and another $1 billion via a convertible bond," and "also plans to launch an exchange-traded fund focused on cryptocurrency."
According to the newspaper:
TMTG said in a statement that "apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources" but did not comment further. Representatives for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
After Reuters also requested comment on the reporting, the news agency noted, TMTG called both Reuters and FT "fake news."
Responding on social media, Elizabeth Sheppard Sellam, director of the politics and international relations program at the University of Tours in France, said that "the most shocking thing is not the project itself, it is who benefits from it: those close to the president, through an opaque structure, and at the heart of the administration."
"The Trump administration has a very strong pro-crypto policy: favorable taxation, favorable regulation, promotion of investments. And meanwhile, his own family is preparing to raise $3 billion to go all-in on bitcoin," she wrote, highlighting Donald Trump Jr.'s role at TMTG.
Sheppard Sellam also noted that both he and the president's second-eldest son, Eric Trump, are set to speak at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, scheduled to start Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada. Other planned speakers include Vice President JD Vance, Trump's "Crypto Czar" David Sacks, and various Republicans in Congress.
"Where does politics end and business begin?" the professor asked. "He is a sitting head of state whose immediate entourage is organizing massive financial operations, with a direct effect on the markets... and on their wallets."
trump is corrupt. Republicans don't care.
[image or embed]
— Action Together New Jersey (@actiontogethernj.bsky.social) May 26, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Florian Hollenbach, an economist at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, simply said, "So much corruption and all out in the open."
The FT reporting came just days after the president dined with the top investors in his meme coin at his Virginia golf club—an event that drew protesters whose chants included: "America's not for sale," "Lock him up," and "Trump is a traitor."
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has also generated alarm with his crypto executive order. His administration faced further criticism last month for disbanding a U.S. Department of Justice unit tasked with investigating criminal actors in the digital asset space—a decision laid out in a memo authored by the president's former personal defense attorney.
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How to Meet with Trump: A South African Masterclass in Diplomatic Strategy
South Africa's president read Trump perfectly and knew exactly how to handle this obvious and simple man.
May 24, 2025
You probably saw the cringe-worthy spectacle a few months ago: U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House. The Ukrainian president's pained expression as he described facing down Russian President Vladimir Putin—an authoritarian bent on destroying democracy and consuming land that isn't his—while Trump, who clearly identifies more with the aggressor than the victim, publicly humiliated him. Trump celebrated this awful spectacle as "good television." Once a desperate attention seeking reality show host, always a desperate attention seeking reality show host.
It's worth asking: Why would any world leader willingly walk into that gilded trap of an Oval Office—where, notably and ironically, "none of the items on the mantle in Trump's Oval Office were made in the U.S."—knowing they'll likely face an inept man-child who ignores shared reality and acts as though the universe revolves around him?
South Africa just gave every world leader a roadmap for navigating Trump without losing their dignity or falling into his reality TV traps.
Then South Africa's president showed up and delivered a masterclass in strategic diplomacy.
While it's important to talk about the falsehoods regarding "white genocide" that Trump kept repeating during this meeting—as many outlets are doing—I think we also need to examine the brilliance of how President Cyril Ramaphosa handled this, shall we use the very diplomatic language of, challenging leader.
Reading the Room (and the Racist)
This visit came days after the administration's theatrical welcome of white South African "refugees"—an absurd spectacle given that South Africa, where the white population at 7% of the total still owns 50% of the land and where a majority of crime impacts non-white South Africans, is hardly experiencing white genocide. The real genocide Trump ignores? Gaza, which the United States explicitly supports.
But rather than falling into the cruel trap Trump and Vance set for Zelenskyy, South Africa's president read Trump perfectly and knew exactly how to handle this obvious and simple man.
The Blueprint: Three Brilliant Moves
Move 1: Disarm with Humor
The South African president joked that he was sorry he couldn't bring Trump a plane, to which Trump replied, "I wish you would have." Any observer knows it would be a massive conflict of interest for a U.S. president to accept a plane from a foreign leader. Unfortunately, this isn't hypothetical, as Trump officially accepted a luxury plane gifted by Qatar's leader on the same day on May 21. But Trump, existing in his gold-plated self-centered universe, just enjoyed the joke. Brilliant—point out actual corruption while flattering the ego.
When an ABC reporter had simply asked about the Pentagon's announcement regarding this controversial Qatari gift, Trump unleashed his predictable (and with its frequency, less interesting but no less dangerous) attack on the press: "What do you have to do with the Qatari jet? They're giving the United States Air Force a jet. Okay? And it's a great thing… You are a terrible reporter. Number one, you don't have what it takes to be a reporter. You're not smart enough."
But humor? That disarmed him completely. The South African president got Trump to openly joke about foreign governments buying influence, something that would send any other president scrambling for damage control. All it took was the right tone and one luxury plane as a punchline.
Move 2: Bring the Right White Men
Recognizing Trump's racism (evident in everything from unlawful abductions that did not follow any due process and sent likely majority innocent people to El Salvador to the inconceivable resurgence of the Nazi salute in Trump's White House to the targeting students of color who speak out about the atrocities in Gaza) and sexism, the president knew he'd need white men to make Trump listen. But not just any white man—he brought golfer Ernie Els.
When Trump presented misleading clips and questionable papers (which reporters noted had nothing to do with his claims), he again predictably attacked the press: "If the news wasn't fake, like NBC, which is fake news, totally, one of the worst, ABC, NBC, CBS, horrible... if we had real reporters, they'd be covering it."
But Els? Trump actually listened to Els, who gently educated this president averse to historical realities: "It's been 35 years since the transition. President Ramaphosa was right in the middle of the transition time, 1990 and before that... There was a lot of stuff happening in the apartheid days. You know, we grew up in the apartheid era. But I don't think two wrongs make a right. President Mandela, when he came out of prison... didn't come out with hatred, you know, and really unified our nation with his sport."
A white man who has captured Trumps attention because of golf, that colonial relic spread by the British colonial elites during the 18th and 19th centuries, became the vehicle for Trump to hear about South Africa's real issues rather than his fantasized "white genocide" narrative.
Move 3: Speak the Language of Wealth
Understanding that people who hoard wealth only hear from other wealth hoarders, President Ramaphosa brought South Africa's richest man, Johann Rupert. Surrounded by the Oval Office's imported gold, Rupert could speak Trump's language while delivering hard truths: "We have too many deaths. But it's across the board. It's not only white farmers. It's across the board... The crime is terrible, sir... but the biggest murder rate is in the Cape Flats. Gangs."
With a billionaire as messenger, Trump was momentarily forced to confront reality rather than his distorted fantasy of South Africa.
The Lesson Plan
So what can other world leaders learn from this diplomatic parkour?
- Use humor to disarm while pointing out actual violations: it catches Trump off guard when reporters can't.
- Bring a white man who does something Trump cares about: Your options are limited to golf, wrestling, or maybe real estate, but stick to sports
- If possible, bring wealth: the ultra-rich can only hear from other ultra-rich
There you have it. South Africa just gave every world leader a roadmap for navigating Trump without losing their dignity or falling into his reality TV traps.
The question now is: Who will be smart enough to follow it?
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