The Next Trump Scandal?

Don't sleep on his meme coins

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Article I, Section 9 , Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting gifts, money or other benefits from any "king, prince, or foreign state," without congressional consent.

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign State.

It’s called the emoluments clause. The Constitution also contains a domestic version, which prohibits the president from receiving any emolument from the federal government or the states beyond compensation for their services as chief executive.

President Trump and his wife Melania just opened the door to foreign and domestic gifts through meme coin offerings that are already worth billions of dollars on paper. There is nothing stopping foreign governments and domestic billionaires from funneling money directly to the Trumps via this unregulated, unreported channel.

It is unseemly — to say the least.

It could violate the Constitution — as Gene Weingarten notes in his Substack today.

"I'm open for business," he seems to be saying to foreign politicos and potentates. Bitcoin-type investments are notoriously easy to do anonymously, any time, from anywhere. The controls are lax or nonexistent -- especially, I am guessing, from now on, in the United States, at least for the next four years. We'll become famous among tax evaders and money launderers and Vladimir Putin. We’ll become The Cayman Islands.

The emoluments clause, which prohibits public officials from being secretly enriched by foreign leaders or governments, has been finally dragged into the bathroom and drowned in the tub. There was no kicking and screaming. It went, quiet and docile.

It is in keeping with Trump’s strategy to bring billionaire tech founders to heel — for his benefit.

Tech billionaires at the inaugural address

And it’s an affront to MAGA voters who want the swamp drained in Washington, those people demanding change to a system that enriches political leaders while growing the gap between the filthy rich and the working poor. Not that most MAGA voters will notice or care how Trump leverages his faux populism.

For those of you who don’t know (I had to look it up), meme coins are a type of highly volatile cryptocurrency inspired by popular internet or cultural trends. According to this CNN business story, they carry no intrinsic value but can soar, or plummet, in price.

Now, Trump will not only preside over how the federal government will regulate crypto, he can personally cash in on the outcome.

“I believe it is very dangerous to have the people who are supposed to oversee regulating financial instruments investing in them at the same time,” Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. “There’s no precedent for a head of state to launch a personal cryptocurrency.”

Painter, the top ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush Administration, said the launch of the meme coins just hours before inauguration raises “serious ethical questions about conflicts of interest.”

“The coin’s value could be influenced by his actions or policies once in office, particularly as Trump has said he will be more crypto-friendly, which will likely further inflate the coin’s value at least temporarily,” Painter said.

Trump once trashed bitcoin as “based on thin air.” But then he flip-flopped to embraced crypto and promised to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.”

What could have made him change his mind? I can think of billions of reason$.