Protesters assembled Thursday evening outside President Trump’s Virginia golf course in advance of a private dinner he has planned with several hundred buyers of his cryptocurrency tokens.
Holding signs with slogans like “Grift Gala,” “No Kings” and “No One Is Above the Law,” the demonstrators gathered to challenge the soon-to-start dinner that Mr. Trump is hosting at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., where as many as 220 top holders of his family’s crypto had purchased access to the president.
The protests outside Mr. Trump’s private club followed a smaller gathering at the Capitol, where half a dozen Democrats from the House and Senate denounced the dinner. Some of them called it one of the most corrupt acts in American history and demanded that Mr. Trump release the full names of the guests he is hosting.
“It is a Mount Everest of corruption,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon. He then read excerpts from the Constitution and cited examples in early American history of presidential corruption schemes. “We have to put an end to this,” he said.
Mr. Trump and his business partners organized the event by announcing last month what they called “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION” in the world: a contest to buy access to the president by purchasing $TRUMP, a cryptocurrency token launched just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
The top 220 buyers would dine with the president at the golf club while the top 25 would join him at a more intimate cocktail reception and tour the White House the next day.
A leaderboard on the website of Mr. Trump’s memecoin, called $TRUMP, allowed crypto investors to see how much they needed to purchase to move up the rankings and win a spot.
A memecoin is a type of cryptocurrency tied to an online joke or mascot; it typically has no function beyond speculation. But Mr. Trump’s coins have become a vehicle for investors, including some based overseas, to funnel money to his family.
“Let’s go MAGA baby,” one Trump fan said as he left the club, yelling at the protesters held outside as Secret Service officers guarded the entrance.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Thursday rejected any suggestion that Mr. Trump was acting inappropriately by hosting the dinner.
“It’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency,” Ms. Leavitt said at the White House, before Mr. Trump headed to his golf club. “This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly, not only has he lost wealth, but he also almost lost his life. He has sacrificed a lot to be here.”
But that response did not impress the demonstrators.
“It is like a black-market scheme,” said Rose Fabia, 66, of Arlington, Va., a former federal employee. “He will use crypto as a way to line his pockets.”
The dinner offer created a frenzy of sorts among crypto executives around the world, several of whom attended with the specific intention of influencing U.S. policy. The event was unlike anything in recent American history — not a campaign fund-raiser but a gathering arranged by the president’s business partners to directly enrich the first family.
Many of the guests have a stake in how cryptocurrencies are regulated in the United States. They viewed the dinner as an opportunity to hear directly from Mr. Trump and gain insight into how they might expand operations in the United States, after Biden-era rules led many of them to avoid investments here.
This week, Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire who runs the Tron platform, announced that he would also attend the dinner — and that he controlled the account listed as No. 1 on the leaderboard, with more than $20 million worth of coins. Mr. Sun, who was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023, was also a large investor in World Liberty Financial, another Trump family crypto venture.
The S.E.C. paused Mr. Sun’s fraud case not long after Mr. Trump took power in January. “Honored to support POTUS and grateful for the invitation,” Mr. Sun wrote on X this week.
Some of the attendees were lower-profile entrepreneurs, influencers or Trump superfans, willing to pay for the chance to meet the president.
“If I were to get a selfie or a handshake or something or an autograph, that would be priceless in and of itself for me,” said Vincent Deriu, a 27-year-old consultant who was ranked No. 165 on the $TRUMP leaderboard.
A business entity tied to the Trumps sits on a large stash of the $TRUMP cryptocurrency and collects fees every time the coins change hands. So far, the coin has generated at least $320 million in fees, which the Trumps share with their business partners, according to Chainalysis, a crypto analytics firm.
The contest was set up by a company called Fight, Fight, Fight, which was created in January and is named after Mr. Trump’s response to the assassination attempt against him in July.
Originally, the Fight, Fight, Fight website, run by Bill Zanker, a longtime business partner of the Trump family, promised “a Special V.I.P. White House tour” for the top 25 coin holders. But references to the White House have been scrubbed from the site, which now promises a “V.I.P. Tour,” without specifying the location.
Mr. Zanker did not respond to a request for comment. Asked about the change, a senior administration official said the White House was not arranging a special tour for the crypto investors and had “nothing” to do with the memecoin event.
But the official said the dinner organizers might still be taking guests on a tour of the East Wing of the White House, which is open to the public.
A spokesman for Trump Organization also attempted to distance the company from the event, saying it was not involved. But the Trump family itself, through a corporate entity called CIC Digital, takes a cut of the profits and the dinner was held at a golf club it owns.
Representative Sam Liccardo, Democrat of California, called the dinner an offense to the principles of honest government in the United States.
“No politician could have designed a scheme better suited to facilitate corruption from foreign individuals than the issuance of a digital asset that largely conceals the identity of its buyer,” said Mr. Liccardo, a member of the House Financial Services Committee who generally is supportive of the crypto industry.
David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from New York. He can be reached at [email protected].
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
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