Since taking office, Donald Trump has erased the line between public duty and private gain, turning the presidency into a personal business opportunity. Trump’s corruption isn’t just a character flaw; it’s a threat to every American’s future. When government decisions are shaped by loyalty, profit, or personal power instead of the public good, we all lose—in higher prices, lost trust, and a democracy that no longer works for the people it was built to serve.
CryptoCorruption vs. The STABLE and GENIUS Acts: The Senate is currently embroiled in the passage of two cryptocurrency regulatory bills: the STABLE Act and the GENIUS Act. Democrats have pushed for amendments to the bills that regulate the use of cryptocurrency to ban presidents, lawmakers, and their families from issuing, endorsing, or sponsoring crypto assets.
Why are these amendments important? Because, unlike traditional assets and funds, crypto assets are virtual currencies whose value is stored and transferred using technology that acts completely outside banks or any central authority. The Trump outfit is deeply invested in its crypto business dealings which have increased the Family’s wealth by billions over the last six months. And if the STABLE and GENIUS Acts pass without these limitations on the involvement of the President and his family, the Trumps’ use of cryptocurrencies to build wealth through untraceable means will abide without limits.
The Cost of a Private Crypto Dinner: On May 22, the President hosted an “exclusive” dinner at Trump National Golf Club, Washington, DC. The exclusivity involved a contest in which seats to the dinner were offered only to the top 220 worldwide investors in his memecoin, “Official Trump,” during a 19-day period. The digital token is sold by Fight Fight Fight, LLC, a company linked to the Trump family. Estimates of the collective spend during the contest topped $140 million. But following the end of the contest, once their seats at the dinner were secured, many of the winning contestants had already liquidated their holdings, indicating that the end goal was the private access to the President and not the financial returns on their investment.
Why is this event important? First, monetizing “exclusive” private audiences with a sitting President is not simply unprecedented; it’s unprecedented precisely because it poses serious conflict-of-interest issues. Second, by setting an investment period with definitive start and end dates, investors whose end goal is not the dinner invitation but the increased value of the investment can sell at the acme just before the close of the investment period. Third, according to a Bloomberg blockchain analysis and as evidenced by the dinner’s guest list, much of the memecoin purchasing activity took place outside of the U.S. When coupled with relevant features of cryptocurrency (it’s largely unregulated and untraceable), this foreign investment is noteworthy. Our laws specifically bar contributions from outside the US and prohibit politicians from receiving personal gains from campaign funds. And this sort of activity offers yet one more critical argument for the regulation of cryptocurrency in this country.
An(other) Exclusive Venue for Accessing the President: Touted by Sean Spicer as “the No. 1 surrogate and power player in the [MAGA] ecosystem outside of his father,” Don Jr. launched a venture last month that jettisons pay-to-play culture into a whole new dimension. By design, “Executive Branch” is a social club catering to business and tech moguls eager to deepen their relationships with the Trump administration and its allies, another “exclusive” opportunity to gain access to the President and his family. With members handpicked from a referral-only invite list whose membership investment tops $500k apiece, Executive Branch’s waitlist has sparked a bidding war worth multi-millions.
Why is this venture important? Like the memecoin dinner, Executive Branch, offers another “exclusive” opportunity to gain access to the President and his family. Normalizing the price-tagging of private (or even not-so-private) audiences with the President is providing the Trump family with endless opportunities to enrich themselves personally. So far, these opportunities have been behind closed doors, presumably out of reach of the law’s long arm.
The UAE + USD1: World Liberty Financial, a Trump Family venture actively managed by Eric and Don Jr., announced in March the launch of its own stablecoin called USD1. The USD1 was the finance vehicle chosen by an Abu Dhabi firm investing $2 billion in one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange companies. Last month, Eric attended meetings to expand the Trump presence in the region, with Trump Tower Dubai set to start construction this fall. Within weeks, he returned to Dubai to sit on the dais of a crypto event representing WLF and is currently planning to merge his bitcoin mining company, American Bitcoin, with a mining company already traded on the Nasdaq.
Why is this crypto vehicle important? The Trump family continues to expand its investment portfolios to include all vertical facets of cryptocurrency, from mining to trading. With Eric prominently featured as the face of the American Bitcoin brand, its association with the Trump family is being spun as a feature, not a flaw. House Speaker Mike Johnson crows that the conspicuous nature of the Trump family’s business dealings proves that the President has “nothing to hide.” He contrasts the Trumps’ transparency with the Biden family’s “fake family businesses” involving “shell companies or fake LLC’s,” as if to say that up-front corruption is somehow better than corruption behind closed doors. But if that were really the case, why would MAGA Republicans have decried Hunter Biden’s pardon as evidence of corruption in its open and notorious misuse of presidential power? One could well argue that the hypocrisy of these Republican elected officials has no bounds.
Currying Favor with Foreign Governments: In March, Donald Trump Jr. met with the president of Serbia to discuss US foreign aid to Serbia as a segment for Trump’s podcast. During that meeting, Don Jr. expressed support for the Serbian president just as the Trump family was moving forward with their plans to build their first European Trump International Hotel in Belgrade. After that meeting, the Serbian president described the encounter on social media as “a cordial conversation with … the son of US President Donald Trump about bilateral relations” between the two countries. The scenario is complicated and nuanced. It’s hard to pinpoint where US foreign policy ends and the Trump family’s financial interests begin.
And within the past two weeks, Eric Trump and Vietnam’s prime minister broke ground on a $1.5 billion luxury residential development with three 18-hole golf courses outside of Hanoi at the same time as Eric was explorating plans with government officials for a skyscraper in Vietnam’s business hub, Ho Chi Minh City.
Why are these alignments important to you? The Trump Organization recently garnered the approval for the Hanoi project from Vietnam’s Communist authorities. These authorities not only fast-tracked the approval process, but they ignored their own laws to do it. And the approval comes exactly at a time when Vietnam is negotiating with the Trump Administration over the threat of steep tariffs. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing business with top-level officials in other countries, pause is certainly warranted when the people who manage the Trump Family assets engage in business dealings with leaders of foreign governments that have special interests in gaining President Trump’s good graces.
The health of our democracy depends on more than elections—it depends on us. Corruption at the highest levels won’t stop unless we stop it. That means staying informed, speaking out, and using every tool we have to demand accountability. Call your representatives. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Share the facts. Every voice matters. And when we raise them together, we can protect the values that make this country worth fighting for. The future of our democracy is on the line. Let’s meet this moment.