Rep. Jamie Raskin demanded a detailed list of the dinner guests and the sources of the funds they used to buy the cryptocurrencies. A top House Democrat on Wednesday night opened a probe into the private dinner that President Donald Trump hosted for top investors in his meme coin, seeking to highlight the ethical and legal concerns raised by the president’s willingness to profit while in office. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, demanded Trump turn over the names of the guests who attended last week’s gala after pouring millions of dollars into the president’s crypto venture. The Maryland congressman also pressed the president to disclose what steps he used to determine the source of the funds used to purchase the meme coin, citing concerns that some of the money could have come from foreign governments seeking to influence the White House. “Publication of this list will also let the American people know who is putting tens of millions of dollars into our President’s pocket so we can start to figure out what — beyond virtually worthless memecoins — they are getting in exchange for all this money,” Raskin wrote in a letter, which was first reported by The Washington Post. Ethics experts and Trump’s political opponents say the meme coin dinner was the starkest example to date of Trump’s willingness to blur the lines between his for-profit business interests and his office. (…) On Tuesday, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, said it planned to raise $2.5 billion from about 50 investors to purchase Bitcoin. Trump launched his $TRUMP meme coins days before he was sworn in. Meme coins are novelty digital currencies, often named for online jokes, that tend to show wild swings in price and “have limited or no use or functionality,” the Securities and Exchange Commission said in February. An affiliate of Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, operates the meme coin alongside a Delaware-registered company called Fight Fight Fight, run by longtime Trump ally Bill Zanker. Together, the two groups own 80 percent of the 1 billion Trump coins. In April, the Trump-affiliated business announced that the 220 top holders of the meme coin would be rewarded with a “night to remember” at his golf club in Virginia. Since the coin’s debut, Trump-affiliated businesses have received $312 million from crypto sales and $43 million in total fees, according to a Post analysis of data through mid-May. At the same time, the White House has sought to limit regulation of digital assets and pursued policies intended to legitimize cryptocurrencies, potentially increasing their value. Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s sons spoke at a Las Vegas gathering of bitcoin investors on Wednesday.
via washingtonpost: House Democrat launches investigation of Trump’s meme coin dinner