Trump's crypto dinner: Black ties, a Chinese billionaire and ethics questions
Show Caption
Hide Caption
President Trump's crypto controversy clash
House Democrats walked out of a cryptocurrency legislation hearing and moved down the hall for their own 'shadow hearing' in hopes to put the focus on President Trump's close ties to the crypto industry. They claim he's engaged in massive corruption.
Fox - 4 News
President Donald Trump has attended plenty of black tie dinners with the wealthy, but his latest soiree stands out among the annals of presidential dining as he boosts the growing crypto industry, profits from it and invites a torrent of criticism about the ethical implications.
Trump will depart the White House on May 22 and head to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, to dine with 220 investors who plowed a combined $394 million into his crypto venture, according to media reports. The dinner with the president is their reward for making the leaderboard in a contest to be among the top purchasers of the $TRUMP meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency.
A crypto-friendly president who repeatedly has faced ethical questions is diving into both with the dinner. It comes just a day after the Trump administration accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar in a deal that raised concerns about the foreign nation trying to curry influence with the president.
Democrats and ethics experts are staging a protest before the dinner, which they say provides a way for the wealthy to influence the president by funneling money to his business. An affiliate of The Trump Organization and the company Fight Fight Fight LLC own 80% of the meme coins, according to the cryptocurrency's website.
Among those protesting is Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, who wrote on social media that the dinner is "a stunning public display of corruption: The White House and President Trump are selling access to the government for personal profit."
Crypto analysis firm Chainalysis found that Trump and business entities connected to him made more than $1.3 million in trading fees in the days after the dinner was announced, Chainalysis spokesman Jorah Huntington told USA TODAY earlier this month.
'This is one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency I've ever seen,' said Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump "is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself."
"President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media," Kelly added.
Chinese billionaire attending dinner
The list of dinner guests is not public. However, one of those attending is Chinese-born crypto mogul Justin Sun, who announced his plans on social media.
"As the top holder of $TRUMP, I'm excited to connect with everyone, talk crypto, and discuss the future of our industry," Sun said, who is worth $8.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Trump once criticized the crypto industry but has since become a huge booster and investor. He promoted cryptocurrencies on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Nashville in July for the Bitcoin Conference that he wanted to make the United States 'the crypto capital of the planet and bitcoin superpower of the world.' He has promised favorable regulation of the industry, which supported his campaign.
The president held a crypto summit in the White House with prominent figures in the industry and signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile. The administration dismantled a Justice Department unit targeting crypto fraud.
Trump's financial stake in the industry has raised ethical concerns, though. He launched a pair of cryptocurrency tokens and owns 60% of the crypto platform World Liberty Financial.
Trump's big crypto revenues
Two of the cryptocurrency investments owned by Trump-affiliated entities alone have made at least $300 million in trading fees on sales of his meme coin and other digital currency since January, according to ethics watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, crypto analysts and other experts.
Greater potential profits lie in the Trump entities' stake in the value of the meme coin and their other Trump-themed crypto investments, these analysts and other experts say.
Recently, World Liberty Financial announced that one of its digital coins is being used by an Abu Dhabi investment firm for a $2 billion investment in cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Democratic lawmakers and crypto analysts said the deal was a conflict of interest that could earn World Liberty at least $27 million annually.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who has been at the forefront in bringing attention to the issue, opened a preliminary investigation into Trump's crypto businesses this month.
'President Trump's financial entanglements to the $TRUMP coin, as well as the attempted use of the White House to host competitions to prop up the value of $TRUMP, represents an unprecedented, pay-to-play scheme to provide access to the Presidency to the highest bidder," Blumenthal said in a press release announcing the inquiry.
Contributing: Josh Meyer
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fed minutes: Most officials worried about inflation moving higher
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Federal Reserve officials said last month that the threat of higher inflation was a greater concern than the potential for job losses, leading the central bank to keep its key rate unchanged. According to the minutes of the July 29-30 meeting, released Wednesday, members of the Fed's interest-rate setting committee 'assessed that the effects of higher tariffs had become more apparent in the prices of some goods but that their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remained to be seen.' The minutes underscored the reluctance among the majority of the Fed's 19 policymakers to reduce the central bank's short-term interest rate until they get a clearer sense of the impact of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on inflation. So far inflation has crept up in the past couple of months but hasn't risen as much as many economists feared when Trump unveiled some of his duties. The Fed left its key interest rate unchanged last month at about 4.3%, though two members of its governing board dissented in favor of a rate cut. Both dissenters — Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman — were appointed to the board during Trump's first term. At a news conference after the meeting, Chair Jerome Powell signaled that it might take significant additional time for the Fed to determine whether Trump's sweeping tariffs are boosting inflation. When the Fed changes its rate, it often — though not always — affects borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. The Fed typically keeps its rate high, or raises it, to cool borrowing and spending and combat inflation. It often cuts its rate to bolster the economy and hiring when growth is cooling. Christopher Rugaber, The Associated Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
California voters support EV tax incentives, but are wary of sales mandates says poll
California drivers don't want to lose their electric vehicle tax incentives, but even voters in one of the bluest states are wary about reviving plans to phase out gas cars. Voters are split down the middle on whether California should stick to its guns on its Trump-blocked plans to phase out sales of gas cars by 2035, according to an exclusive POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll. Only 46 percent of the more than 1,400 registered voters surveyed said they support the policy, while 47 percent said no. Yes, there was an obvious partisan split: 60 percent of Democrats said they backed the phase-out, compared with 40 percent of independents and 31 percent of Republicans. But the results offer a note of caution for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who directed the California Air Resources Board to start writing new vehicle emissions rules after Republicans revoked the state's sales mandates for cars and heavy-duty trucks in June. 'None of us really like the idea of government intervening to take something away from us,' said Dan Sperling, a former California Air Resources Board member and director of the University of California, Davis' Institute for Transportation Studies. 'That's even the most liberal of us.' Poll respondents are more bought into Newsom's plan to backfill the soon-to-be-defunct $7,500 federal EV tax credit. Nearly two-thirds — 64 percent — said they would support state-funded tax incentives once the federal subsidy ends Sept. 30, as part of the Trump administration's ongoing attacks on clean energy policy. That question again showed a partisan divide, with 80 percent of Democrats saying they back the approach, compared with 60 percent of independent voters and just 43 percent of Republicans. But the overall result bolsters Newsom's push to backfill incentives that the Biden administration used to coax drivers off fossil fuels, as he suggested using cap-and-trade revenues last year and directed state agencies to consider in a June executive order. But Jack Citrin, a veteran political science professor at UC Berkeley and partner on the poll, said a closer look at the poll results shows that Democrats need to keep affordability in mind. He pointed to the fact that 28 percent of respondents said they'd support new EV incentives only if gas prices aren't impacted and another 20 percent said they should be reserved for low-income buyers, reflecting the fact that cost of living was the top concern of voters polled. And 64 percent of respondents said gasoline prices are putting a significant, extreme or moderate burden on their household budgets. 'That reflects a concern with the cost of all of this,' Citrin said. 'Yes, we're for environmental protection. Yes, we're for all of this, just as long as it doesn't cost a lot.' The poll comes as state agencies released a joint report Tuesday with recommendations for countering Trump's assault, calling on lawmakers to bolster tax incentives, improve charging infrastructure and regulate facilities that attract polluting trucks, but offering few specific timelines or dollar figures. CARB Chair Liane Randolph framed the report — which Newsom asked for in his June order — as a first step in the state's defense against a hostile federal government. 'Clean air efforts are under siege, putting the health of every American at risk,' she said during a press briefing. 'California is continuing to fight back and will not give up on cleaner air and better public health.' Sperling called the report a surprisingly 'modest document,' and said it lacks the specificity he hoped to see. 'The word I would use is disconcerting,' Sperling said when asked about where California stands in its fight against Trump. The POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll was fielded by TrueDot, the artificial intelligence-accelerated research platform, in collaboration with the Citrin Center and Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley and POLITICO. The public opinion study, made possible in part with support from the California Constitution Center, was conducted in the field between July 28 and Aug. 12. The sample of 1,445 registered voters was selected at random by Verasight, with interviews conducted in English and Spanish, and includes an oversample of Hispanic voters. The modeled error estimate for the full sample is plus or minus 2.6 percent. The policy influencer study was conducted from July 30 to Aug. 11, among 512 subscribers to POLITICO Pro, and the modeled error estimate is plus or minus 3.7 percent. Like this content? Consider signing up for POLITICO's California Climate newsletter.
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
People Are Calling Trump's Latest Truth Social Rant "Outrageous" After He Slammed American Museums For Discussing "How Bad Slavery Was"
It's been 159 years since slavery was legally abolished in the U.S, and yet, in 2025, discussing the history of slavery has seemingly become too "woke" for the MAGA crowd. During a recent CNN panel discussion, MAGA-supporting celebrity Jillian Michaels shocked her colleagues after she argued that slavery shouldn't be blamed on "just one race," — meaning white Americans. CNN / Twitter: @Acyn Related: Well, President Donald Trump recently took to Truth Social to argue a similar point, criticizing American museums that discuss "how bad slavery was," calling them "woke" and "out of control." He wrote that he's instructed his attorneys to "go through the museums" and make changes to reflect "success" and "brightness." Here's the full post. Related: The now-viral post has been seen by over 10.2 million people and received thousands of comments criticizing Trump for his rhetoric. One person called Trump "out of his damn mind," and advocated for the history of slavery to be taught "again and again." Related: Another person described Trump's post as "pro slavery rhetoric." While this person called the president "fragile" for feeling attacked by teaching slavery. Representative Jim McGovern advised Trump to "spend more time in a museum." Related: And Gov. Gavin Newsom accused Trump of trying to "erase" slavery... And finally, this person asked: "Why do the same people who want to erase the history of slavery insist on preserving the Confederate flag and generals?" What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below. Also in In the News: Also in In the News: Also in In the News:
