Donald Trump’s Cashing in on Crypto Is Denounced as an “Orgy of Corruption”

It looks like an extraordinary grift, even by Donald Trump’s standards. On Thursday, the president is set to host top investors in his meme coin for a private dinner at his DC golf club—an event his crypto venture has billed as the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World.”

The dinner—part political overture to the crypto industry, and part effort to profit off it—brings together more than 200 of the top $TRUMP owners, who collectively spent $394 million on the digital asset from the Trump-affiliated companies CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC. The top 25 holders are promised an “Exclusive Reception before Dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT!”

Who, exactly, are these crypto enthusiasts who plunked down an average of more than a million dollars for a seat at Trump’s dinner? The full guest list isn’t entirely clear, but the attendees include investor Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto bro best known to the broader public as the guy who bought—and ate—the $6.2 million banana Italian conceptual artist Maorgorgurizio Cattelan taped to a wall.

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Outside of his taste for experimental art, Sun—an adviser to Trump’s crypto venture—has previously faced legal scrutiny for his crypto and business activities, including a Securities and Exchange Committee investigation that was dropped in February. The Wall Street Journal also reported Thursday that Sun had been afraid to enter the US in the past for fear of arrest. (Neither Sun nor the SEC commented to the WSJ.)

What makes this more than another garish Trump cash grab: Trump isn’t merely selling dopey meme coins; he’s selling access and potential favor. “He thinks if he commits the offenses in public, you won’t believe that it’s wrong, because corruption normally happens in private,” Senator Chris Murphy, who denounced the dinner at a press conference with fellow Democrats Thursday, told me. “That’s obviously not true.”

“This is an orgy of corruption,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said at that press conference, calling on Congress to take action and for Trump to disclose the guest list for his crypto dinner. “The American people have no idea who is buying access to the president, and no idea what they are getting in return.”

The White House, of course, has brushed off the criticisms: “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “The meme coin has nothing to do with the White House,” another official told NPR.

But it is impossible to separate Trump’s business interests from his presidency: In holding a contest to join him for dinner, the president goosed the value of the coin, which is estimated to have made nearly a million dollars in transaction fees alone just in the first two days of the competition. That money isn’t pouring in because of his coin’s stability, or because of the branded watches some attendees Thursday will receive; it’s because investors—many of whom are believed to be internationally-based—see an opportunity to get something in return. “Anyone who thinks those 220 people who are attending the dinner tonight, who paid about $150 million for those seats, just really crave to have a digital equivalent of a baseball trading card? Well, you’re a little off the mark,” Democrat Jeff Merkeley said at Thursday’s press conference.

The shady crypto sector is already set to get a victory under the self-described “crypto president,” after the Senate advanced an industry-friendly regulatory bill—with some Democratic support. But crypto—and anyone who uses it to buy proximity to the most powerful office in America—could reap even more benefits in the shadows, in what Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal described as an “unprecedented pay-to-play scheme” in a letter announcing a preliminary investigation into the venture earlier this month: The coin, he wrote, “allows, and even invites, anyone in the world, including foreign governments and unscrupulous individuals, to directly enrich the President, while hiding potential payoffs in the pseudonymity of the blockchain.”

But what’s to be done about it? Even as some Republicans express concern about the gathering, the idea that such glaring ethical conflicts would come with real ramifications for him in this Washington era is depressingly remote. Trump, you might say, has bought the metaphorical banana—who’s to stop him from eating it?