Members of the US House of Representatives called for the Justice Department to investigate Donald Trump’s May 22 dinner for his top memecoin investors, citing concerns about “foreign influence over US policy decisions” and “potential corruption and emoluments clause violations.”In a May 22 letter to the Justice Department, 35 House members asked the public integrity section acting chief, Edward Sullivan, to launch an inquiry over the memecoin dinner to determine whether it violated the federal bribery statute or the foreign emoluments clause of the US Constitution. Under the emoluments clause, a US president is barred from accepting any gift from a foreign state without the approval of Congress.
The complete list of attendees was not available at the time of publication. The memecoin dinner still has the potential to affect pending legislation in CongressIn addition to the call for a DOJ investigation, Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate proposed legislation to address what they called “Trump’s crypto corruption” as Congress considered a bill to regulate stablecoins and a market structure bill. Several Senate Democrats who initially voted against advancing the stablecoin bill, called the GENIUS Act, later sided with Republicans to set up a debate in the chamber.
Bloomberg reported that a majority of the attendees at the memecoin dinner were likely foreign nationals based on their connections to crypto exchanges. “US law prohibits foreign persons from contributing to US political campaigns,” said the letter.“However, the $TRUMP memecoin, including the promotion of a dinner promising exclusive access to the President, opens the door for foreign governments to buy influence with the President, all without disclosing their identities.”May 22 letter to DOJ official calling for investigation into Trump memecoin dinner.
or
Share This Story
Article Details
Author / Journalist: Cointelegraph by Turner Wright
The story "US House members call for investigation into Trump's memecoin dinner" has 486 words across 16 sentences, which will take approximately 3 - 5 minutes for the average person to read.
Which news outlet covered this story?
The story "US House members call for investigation into Trump's memecoin dinner" was covered 14 hours ago by Coin Telegraph, a news publisher based in United States.
How trustworthy is 'Coin Telegraph' news outlet?
Coin Telegraph is a fully independent (privately-owned) news outlet established in 2013 that covers mostly crypto news.
The outlet is headquartered in United States and publishes an average of 34 news stories per day.
It's most recent story was published 7 hours ago.
What do people currently think of this news story?
The sentiment for this story is currently Negative, indicating that people regard this as "bad news".
How do I report this news for inaccuracy?
You can report an inaccurate news publication to us via our contact page. Please also include the news #ID number and the URL to this story.
