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emoluments
'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’s Qatari Plane Deal Is Naked Corruption
The gift is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.
May 17, 2025
Eight years ago, the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington became the symbol of influence peddling. Tourists giddily mingled with lobbyists and campaign donors. The cheapest cocktail went for $24. How quaint.
This term, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he is opening a private, members-only club in Georgetown called Executive Branch. Members of the Trump administration, CEOs, and tech executives are among those who have signed up. The membership fee is currently $500,000.
That is the context for the controversy now erupting over Qatar’s gift of a roughly $400 million airplane for use as the new Air Force One, a 747 that would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library when he leaves office, potentially making it available for his personal use (although he denies he would use it). It’s outlandish on its own terms. And it is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.
Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms.
Days before his return to office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, which immediately enriched him by an estimated billions of dollars (although the coin’s worth has since dropped). Since crypto is a purely speculative vehicle, this gave “investors” a chance to send funds straight to Trump, without disclosure or pretense. Sure enough, the United Arab Emirates, another country where he visited this week, gave him... sorry, “invested” $2 billion.
Trump’s family enterprise already owns a crypto mining company, World Liberty Financial, which benefits from his shift from skeptic to deregulator.
Then there are the transactions that all seem to end up with the first family being paid—starting with the $28 million paid by Amazon to First Lady Melania Trump for a documentary.
Now, let’s not romanticize a past golden age of government ethics. The White House saw the Crédit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. Lyndon Johnson used the Federal Communications Commission to give preferential treatment to radio stations he owned. In more recent decades, presidents of both parties conducted a grueling schedule of nearly nonstop campaign fundraising. (My old boss Bill Clinton certainly got grief when party donors slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.) Hunter Biden was accused of peddling influence for personal gain before his father pardoned him on the way out of office.
What’s different here is that the funds are flowing not to a political party or campaign but to the officeholder as an individual. The transaction is direct, naked.
The founders were very concerned about an individual using the power of the presidency to enrich themselves and their family members. They focused sharply on the risks of corruption and were well aware of the myriad ways the system could be abused. And they were especially worried that foreign governments could influence American presidents.
At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris feared the possibility of the president receiving foreign bribes: “One would think the King of England well secured against bribery. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.” The founders wrote anti-corruption protections into our Constitution.
Article I of the Constitution forbids any officeholder from accepting any gift or title from any “King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional consent. It’s called the Foreign Emoluments Clause. At the Virginia ratifying convention for the Constitution, Edmund Randolph made clear how viscerally the framers recoiled from the possibility of foreign funds. He described “an accident, which actually happened, [which] operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving or holding any emoluments from foreign states.”
Trump said, “I would be a stupid person” to turn down the $400 million plane. But remember that the Emoluments Clause is in the part of the Constitution making clear Congress’s power—it’s not up to the president to decide.
In his first term, Maryland and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that Trump illegally profited from foreign and domestic officials who visited his hotel. We agreed. That case got tied up in court, and in 2021, the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed it since Trump was no longer president.
So what lessons can we learn from this, and what ironclad rules could prevent future presidents from profiting so brazenly from office?
To start, Congress should make clear it does not approve of this massive foreign gift to our president. More comprehensively, Congress could pass legislation to fully enforce the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and remove the procedural hurdles that derailed lawsuits in Trump’s first term.
Then it would be time to recognize that we have relied on common sense or self-restraint from previous chief executives. The Brennan Center’s task force of Republican and Democratic former senior officials recommended that presidents be required to put their businesses and assets into a blind trust, a proposal that is part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act that fell to a filibuster in 2022.
Even those protections may be inadequate. Neither the founders nor later generations of lawmakers profited from meme coins.
Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms. For now, all of our astonished outrage is a good start.
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Grifter-in-Chief Trump and the Grift That Keeps on Grifting
In case you haven't noticed, the bribes Trump is taking are getting bigger and bigger.
May 12, 2025
Trump is overplaying his hand.
Not just by usurping the powers of Congress and ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Not just abducting people who are legally in the United States but have put their name to opinion pieces Trump doesn’t like and trucking them off to “detention” facilities. Not just using the Justice Department for personal vengeance. Not just unilaterally deciding how much tariff tax American consumers will have to pay on almost everything they buy.
Polls show all these are tanking Trump’s popularity.
But one thing almost all Americans are firmly against — even many loyal Trumpers — us bribery. And Trump is taking bigger and bigger bribes.
It was reported over the weekend that he’s accepting a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane worth at least $400 million from the Qatari royal family, for use during his presidency and for his personal use afterward.
Trump just can’t resist. He’s been salivating over the plane for months. It’s bigger and newer than Air Force One — and so opulently configured that it’s known as “a flying palace.” (No report on whether it contains a golden toilet.)
Apparently he’s been talking about the plane for months. In February, he toured it while it was parked at Palm Beach International Airport.
He’s tried to redecorate the White House into a palace but that’s not nearly as satisfying as flying around the world in one, especially once he’s left the White House (assuming he will).
Attorney General Pam Bondi said it’s perfectly legal for him to accept such a bribe, er, gift.
Hello?
The U.S. Constitution clearly forbids officers of the United States from taking gifts from foreign governments. It’s called the “emoluments clause.” (See Article I, Section 9.)
Anyone viewing Bondi as a neutral judge of what’s legal and what’s not when it comes to Trump can’t be trusted to be a neutral judge of Bondi. Recall that she represented Trump in a criminal proceeding. Presumably he appointed her attorney general because he knew she’d do and say anything he wanted.
Oh, and she used to lobby for Qatar.
So, what does Qatar get in return for the $400 million plane? What’s the quid for the quo?
This week Trump takes the first overseas trip of his second presidency. He’ll land in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, followed by a visit to Qatar, and then to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E).
That’s a big boost for Qatar right there.
Trump also just did what Qatar has been wanting done for years — announcing that the Persian Gulf (as it’s been known since at least 550 B.C.) will henceforth be known as the Arabian Gulf.
Trump’s company has just announced a new golf resort in Qatar, reportedly partnering with a company owned by the royal family.
Qatar is also pushing the Trump regime to lift sanctions on Syria.
The payback could be any number of things. The only certainty is that you and I and other Americans won’t necessarily benefit.
This week’s trip to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. is as much a personal business trip for Trump and his family businesses as a diplomatic trip.
Eric Trump, who officially runs the family business, has just announced plans for a Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai, part of the U.A.E.
The Trump family’s developments in the Middle East depend on a Saudi-based real estate company with close ties to the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.
Trump’s family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin” — with Trump’s likeness all over it — will be used by the U.A.E. to make a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Trump family.
I had assumed that Trump’s undoing would be his unquenchable thirst for power. It may yet be, but I’m beginning to think his insatiable greed will do him in. America’s Grifter-in-Chief knows no bounds.
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