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Donald Trump is set to raise millions of dollars from the crypto industry this month, but the events have set off alarms for ethics experts.
The president was heading to his Trump National Golf Club on Monday night for a crypto industry fundraiser.
It’s the first of two major crypto-related events the president will be holding at the private club this month just as the policy debate over regulating crypto heats up in Washington.
The “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner” Monday night is a $1.5 million-per-person fundraiser to benefit the pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc.
The event was being co-headlined by venture capitalist David Sacks, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by Axios. Sacks also serves as White House AI & Crypto Czar.
It’s one of the most expensive dinners with the president ever.
“He’s essentially put out a sign that says that he’s open to business, particularly to the crypto industry,” said Jordan Libowitz from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It’s really an intertwining of personal, business, political fundraising and government policy like we’ve never seen before.”
The dinner comes ahead of another crypto-related event the president is set to attend later this month.
On Monday, the president posted on Truth Social promoting a meme coin dinner on May 22 also at his private golf club.
The dinner is being put on for the top 220 holders of the president’s digital asset which was launched just days before he returned to the White House. There, the president will talk about the future of crypto, according to the invitation.
On the same evening, the top 25 holders of the $TRUMP token will also get to attend a private reception with the president before the dinner and participate in a White House tour the next day.
Following the dinner announcement on April 23, the value of the $TRUMP token shot up more than 50 percent.
“Anyone giving money towards this, towards either of them, seems to have the same goal of buying a way into a lack of regulation,” Libowitz said of both events.
Trump has been more open to backing the crypto industry since taking office than his predecessor.
The president signed an executive order promoting digital asset markets in January just days after he was sworn into office.
In March, he went even further by creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile in the federal government.
But the president cozying up to the industry and promoting a dinner that has driven up the value of his own meme coin came as lawmakers are struggling to pass legislation regulating the industry on Capitol Hill.
Over the weekend, a group of nine Democratic senators announced they could not support new legislation regulating crypto unless changes were made ahead of an expected vote in the Senate as early as this week.
The so-called GENIUS Act had previously advanced in Congress with bipartisan support, but the senators said they would not back it unless there were stronger provisions on anti-money laundering, foreign issuers, national security and more.
Some Democrats have also taken issue with the legislation doing nothing to restrict elected officials and their families from participating in crypto ventures.
Passing legislation to regulate stablecoins was expected to be one area where Congress could move forward with bipartisan support in the age of Trump.
But their response could prove problematic as any legislation needs sixty votes, and therefore bipartisan support, to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.
The president was asked on Sunday about pushback over his family being involved in the crypto industry while he’s in office, but he sidestepped concerns.
He said he had not heard about Democrats pulling support for legislation, but he argued crypto is very important.
“I’m a big fan of crypto because I want to keep it away from China,” he told reporters.
At the same time as Trump is touting support for crypto, the Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm MGX is making a $2 billion investment in a crypto deal that could boost the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial.
World Liberty Financial’s co-founder Zach Witkoff, son of Trump adviser Steve Witkoff, announced last week that the deal would use their stablecoin in the crypto exchange Binance.
On Monday, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley called on the Office of Government Ethics to investigate the deal.
They warned in their letter that if the billion-dollar deal is completed, it would “represent a staggering conflict of interest, one that may violate the Constitution and open our government to a startling degree of foreign influence and the potential for a quid pro quo that could endanger national security.”
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