Donald Trump held his private memecoin dinner Thursday night in Loudoun County, Virginia, and just about everything about it was controversial.
The meeting itself was called “unbelievably illegal” by Sen. Chris Murphy, (D-Conn)., and Loudoun County has been in the news lately because its official say it cannot afford to pay for the president’s visits anymore.
Loudoun County is home to the Trump National Golf Club and residents there have been complaining because they say they get locked in, or out, of their homes by authorities when the president visits.
That is just part of the problem, though
The county said that it is struggling to pay for Trump’s trips, and it is not being refunded any of the expenses. Per WUSA9, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said that it coordinates with Secret Service while Trump is visiting, and the time is taxing its overtime budget.
“We are not being reimbursed for that,’ Lt. Col. Christopher Sawyer told the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. “We have asked in writing and we will continue to ask because the resources are significant.”
Sawyer told the board that the “overtime budget is not designed to support this.”
“So, the taxpayers in Loudoun County are paying taxes so the president of the United States can play golf and we’re not being reimbursed for that cost?” Vice Chair and Ashburn District Supervisor Michael Turner asked, per WUSA9. “What if we just didn’t provide the service since we’re not being reimbursed? Are there some legal obligation that local law enforcement has to reinforce the president’s golf games?”
WUSA9 said Sawyer said the sheriff’s office has provided “presidential support” for every sitting president when the Secret Service has asked.
“That does not mean that they get everything because there hits a point where we say, ‘No, we can’t provide certain levels because it just becomes too much,’” he said.
Turner asked if the country was “required to provide if we’re not being reimbursed?”
“I don’t know that the federal government can require us to do that?” Sawyer answered per WUSA9. “However, security in Loudoun County we take that pretty seriously, and the last thing we want is an incident occurring in Loudoun County.”
Julie Briskman, the chair of the county’s finance committee, has asked for a detailed report on how much the county is spending on Trump’s visits.
“With everything going on with quote-unquote waste, fraud, and abuse, I decided that we should figure out how much this is costing the county,” Briskman said.
Briskman claimed that the “Florida Sheriff who is responsible for the Mar-a-Lago area is coming to his board of commissioners for $45 million because of how many times Trump has been coming down to Mar-a-Lago.”
“So again we’re responsible for taxpayer funding and allocating those dollars, and I can tell you a $45 million bill from our sheriff’s department to protect President Trump would not be going over very well with our taxpayers,” she said.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s dinner in Loudoun County was expected to be extremely lucrative for Trump.
“We all deserve to know who is paying their way into accessing the president of the United States of America,” Murphy said in a video shared to his X account on Monday. “This coming Thursday, Donald Trump is holding his memecoin dinner at one of his properties.
“What he is doing is holding a private dinner for the top 220 holders of Trump coin,” he continued. “This is unbelievably illegal. He is essentially selling access to himself to people that are paying him money. Donald Trump makes money off of every single transaction. So, these individuals who have bought thousands, tens of thousands, millions of dollars worth of memecoin have put a lot of money into Donald Trump’s pocket.”
Murphy then continued to list his issues with that.
“We have no idea who these people are, and that should be so worrying to the American people because reports suggest the majority of these individuals aren’t Americans,” he said. “They are actually foreigners. They could be terrorists. They could be sanctioned oligarchs. The bottom line should be simple here. The president should not be selling access to himself or the Oval Office. But having already made the decision to do it, at the very least, we should all be demanding that the list of people Trump is meeting with in private is made public. The American people should see who’s trying to buy off the president of the United States. Who is buying the coin in order to get access to the president, to try and get favors from the American government, from the American taxpayers?
“We all deserve to know who is paying their way into accessing the president of the United States of America.”
Murphy’s comments on the dinner came after Sen. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif)., called Trump’s memcoin the “single most corrupt, self-serving act of any president in American history,” last week.
“You have heard about the meme coin by now. This is the logo of the memecoin. The president’s most brazen cashing in,” Schiff said on the Senate floor. “A corrupt effort that has already made him and his family billions of dollars between its soaring values and the trading fees. This memecoin has gone up-and-down in value, but the thing is, every time it gets traded, every time it gets bought or sold, this guy gets a cut. He gets the fees. Estimated already at the value of hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s like posting his Venmo account online, inviting personal monetary tributes from foreign powers, foreign investors or anyone else who is willing to pay up. You’ve heard about the private dinner associated with this memecoin. The top 220 meme coin owners, many of whom are foreign investors, invited to a private dinner with the president of the United States. Businesses are buying and jockeying to be one of the favored few who also get a private audience with him if they are willing to buy millions of meme coins, not to mention a personal tour of the White House. But beyond the meme coins and private dinners, there’s also something else brewing behind the scenes. As I speak, Eric Trump and Don Jr. are getting into the action, jetting around the world building their own financial empire in the crypto business space. In Dubai, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial Firm announced a joint venture capital firm backed by the government of Abu Dhabi that would invest $2 billion using Trump digital currency.
Murphy’s comments on the dinner came after Sen. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif)., called Trump’s memcoin the “single most corrupt, self-serving act of any president in American history,” last week.
“You have heard about the meme coin by now. This is the logo of the memecoin. The president’s most brazen cashing in,” Schiff said on the Senate floor. “A corrupt effort that has already made him and his family billions of dollars between its soaring values and the trading fees. This memecoin has gone up-and-down in value, but the thing is, every time it gets traded, every time it gets bought or sold, this guy gets a cut. He gets the fees. Estimated already at the value of hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s like posting his Venmo account online, inviting personal monetary tributes from foreign powers, foreign investors or anyone else who is willing to pay up. You’ve heard about the private dinner associated with this memecoin. The top 220 meme coin owners, many of whom are foreign investors, invited to a private dinner with the president of the United States. Businesses are buying and jockeying to be one of the favored few who also get a private audience with him if they are willing to buy millions of meme coins, not to mention a personal tour of the White House. But beyond the meme coins and private dinners, there’s also something else brewing behind the scenes. As I speak, Eric Trump and Don Jr. are getting into the action, jetting around the world building their own financial empire in the crypto business space. In Dubai, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial Firm announced a joint venture capital firm backed by the government of Abu Dhabi that would invest $2 billion using Trump digital currency.
“Now, I know it’s hard to keep all these billions apart,” he added. “You got the $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner by the Saudis. You got $5.5 billion investment by other gulf nations in Trump properties. You got $2 billion here, another $5.5 billion there, another $2 billion here and pretty soon you are talking about serious money for the Trump family. This deal alone will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. So, that’s the ‘Art of the Deal’ with this president. Trump gets rich. You get screwed.”
