Presidential Payola: The Evolution of Political Bribery

How $TRUMP coins create a cash funnel for influence and foreign meddling.

Both Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon took cash bribes while in the White House and before. Agnew’s dated back to shakedowns he did as Maryland governor, while Nixon helped Jimmy Hoffa get out of a prosecution and allegedly ran interference for a group of milk producers.

Since then, bribing politicians has gotten a lot easier thanks to five Republicans on the US Supreme Court. Their Citizens United decision, decided 15 years ago this week, legalized political bribery so long as it is done through campaign, PAC, or SuperPAC funds.

But for some people there’s just never enough money.

Donald Trump had been running small-time hustles to make money for decades, selling sneakers, bibles, steaks, vodka, water, etc., and he expanded these schemes when he became president in 2016 to let his followers give him money in exchange for what they thought were collectable assets.

Remember, back in 2000, when he was first seriously considering running for president (on the Reform Party ticket), he said:

“It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

After his son-in-law got $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, though, and his companies made an estimated $2.4 billion during his last presidency, it appears that Trump decided the small stuff was for pikers so he’s going to crank the door wide open to serious tens-of-billions-of-dollars money.

First, he and his son-in-law are working with several foreign governments, including Bulgaria and Vietnam, to build Trump properties that will fatten Trump‘s wallet. This, in itself, is a blatant example of how foreign governments can buy influence with his administration.

But then he kicked the door to corruption even wider.

A “fungible crypto asset” like the new $TRUMP coin (and the $MELANIA coin) is essentially a digital picture that’s limited in its issue to a certain number of items. Each individual “coin” is separately kept and can be traded on the Solana blockchain, guaranteeing there won’t be counterfeits.

So, what people are buying when they pick up $TRUMP coins are essentially tiny digital pictures of his face with the words “fight, fight, fight!” They have no intrinsic or underlying value, and are not backed by any asset, crypto or otherwise. Their “collector value” — which is how they’re being hawked on his website — is equally sketchy, particularly if there will be a billion of them in circulation.

Bottom line: it appears that $TRUMP coins are simply a way “friends of Trump” can funnel cash to him and he can verify their transfer so he could, if he chose, help them out.

Trump initially issued 200 million of the coins, and they’re currently trading at $33.69 each (down from $75.35 earlier in the week), meaning the market value or capitalization of $TRUMP is currently $7.59 billion, exceeding even the more generous estimates of Trump’s previous net worth.

When he releases another 800 million over the next three years it appears he’ll make tens of billions more, so long as people or governments keep buying/trading them.

Thus, anybody who wants to give Trump a large amount of money, presumably in exchange for his good will or even a specific change in policy or position, now no longer has to visit the White House with a briefcase full of cash like Jimmy Hoffa and the milk guys did.

All they have to do is drop a few million or billion on $TRUMP and, because the Solana blockchain is public, Trump can immediately see who’s giving him cash. The rest of us can’t though: the blockchain only identifies the purchaser’s wallet, which is typically an obscure set of numbers. But if that purchaser has told Trump which wallet is theirs, he can track down who spiffed him and who didn’t.

The Founders of our republic were very concerned about this type of scenario. Alexander Hamilton wrote, in Federalist 22:

“Evils of this description ought not to be regarded as imaginary. One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption. …

“In republics, persons elevated from the mass of the community, by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens, to stations of great pre-eminence and power, may find compensations for betraying their trust… Hence it is that history furnishes us with so many mortifying examples of the prevalency of foreign corruption in republican governments. How much this contributed to the ruin of the ancient commonwealths has been already delineated.”

This led to the Constitution containing the Foreign Emoluments Clause, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, that explicitly says:

“[N]o 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.”

Interestingly, Alexander Hamilton believed the clause didn’t apply to the president or vice president; when he was Secretary of the Treasury, the Senate asked him to clarify by submitting a list of office holders who were subject to the clause’s provisions. His list only included political appointees.

The Supreme Court has never issued a decision on the Emoluments Clause, either, adding to the ambiguity of the state of the law.

To solve the problem of this uncertainty, in 1966 Congress passed The Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act which specifically identified the president and vice president as “employees” of the US government who may not, under penalty of prosecution, accept any gift with more than minimal value without congressional approval.

Enforcing that law, though, would require Trump’s Attorney General to investigate his cash flow and then prosecute him, something that’s unlikely given how he will apparently (based on how Pam Bondi avoided answering direct questions) only appoint people to that position who promise loyalty to him above the Constitution or the good of our nation.

And any sort of congressional investigation of Trump taking what may appear to be bribes is equally unlikely; he’s made it clear that he and Elon will destroy any elected Republican in their next primary who tries to hold him accountable.

On top of all that, the $TRUMP coin is just a small part of a much larger and rather sprawling collection of internet- and blockchain-based crypto operations Trump and his family are involved with that could make them billions. Wendy Siegelman does a deep dive into them over at her brilliant Substack newsletter.

With the $TRUMP coin vehicle that enables foreign governments, princes, and even domestic billionaires or companies to shovel millions or even billions directly into Trump’s pockets, it appears that he’s decided to leave his working class MAGA followers in the dust and redirect his efforts toward the truly morbidly rich.

After all, he can’t run for election again (and will be 82) in 2028 (unless he pulls a Putin and runs for VP); he no longer needs his MAGA followers, at least as a revenue source, for the moment.

In his inaugural speech, Trump referred to his second presidency as the start of a “golden age” for America. Most likely, though, it’ll just be a golden pile of cash filling the money bin of the most corrupt president in American history…

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