House Speaker Mike Johnson wants you to know he is a very “busy” man. Too busy, in fact, to care about Donald Trump‘s blatant corruption.
When confronted with legitimate concerns that Trump is using the power of the presidency to enrich himself by launching a crypto meme coin and allowing the scheme’s top investors to dine privately with him at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, Johnson essentially shrugged.
“President Trump held a closed-door event Thursday night for top investors in his private cryptocurrency. We do not know who was there. The list has not been released. We do not know how much of the money came from outside the country,” Jake Tapper said while interviewing Johnson Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “The president has, of course, a huge role to play when it comes to regulation, regulating crypto. I really have a difficult time imagining that, if this was a Democratic president doing the exact same thing, you wouldn’t be outraged.”
“Well, look, I don’t know anything about the dinner. I was a little busy this past week, as you know, getting the reconciliation package over the line,” the speaker said, referring to legislation that would severely cut Medicare and Medicaid while carrying out Trump’s domestic agenda. “And so I’m not going to comment on something I haven’t even heard about. I’m not sure who was there, what the purpose was.”
Johnson went on to praise Trump, who has also evaded questions about how much he has made on the meme coin, as “the greatest dealmaker, one of the greatest dealmakers of all time.”
And sure, Trump’s crypto investments have been great deals — for the president’s wallet. The Trump family has added nearly $2.9 billion to its net worth because of its crypto investments, comprising 37 percent of Trump’s total assets, State Democracy Defenders Action estimated in a report issued earlier this month.
“As a stakeholder in crypto assets, President Trump will likely profit from the very policies he is pursuing,” the authors of the report wrote. Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order, Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology, created regulations that encourage digital currency growth. As a result of the order, Trump’s Justice Department directed prosecutors not to charge people for digital assets fraud unless the funds are used to commit other criminal offenses “such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing.” Meaning, digital assets fraud will not be prosecuted unless it is done in furtherance of another crime.
Trump doesn’t just earn money when the value of his meme goes up, he also profits from trading fees. Less than two weeks after $TRUMP launched, according to Reuters, trades of the coin amassed between $86-100 million in fees.
While Johnson is blasé about Trump’s corruption and investors purchasing access to the president, he was very concerned about people potentially buying access to then-President Joe Biden through his son — even though a months-long House investigation was unable to uncover any evidence of impeachable offenses or wrongdoing by the president.
“The difference, of course, is that President Trump does everything out in the open. He’s not trying to hide anything,” Johnson told Tapper when asked about the comparison between Biden and Trump. “He’s putting it out there, so everybody can evaluate for themselves.”
Of course, not all of the details about the dinner are out in the open as Johnson claims. The identities of the majority of the invitees, including the 25 VIP dinner attendees, are unknown. According to a Bloomberg News analysis, 19 of the top 25 wallets to purchase $TRUMP used foreign exchanges, hinting that the majority of those buying the most of Trump’s token are not from the U.S. and raising concerns about foreign influence of the president.
When asked for details on attendees, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “The president is attending it in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner.”
Self-identified dinner attendees include Chinese crypto billionaire Justin Sun (whose company Tron has been linked to illicit crypto activity and was reportedly under investigation by the Biden Justice Department), social media influencer Nicholas Pinto (who complained the food was subpar), and former NBA player Lamar Odom (who has his own cryptocurrency and was booed by protesters as he arrived at the venue).
When Tapper asked about the 220 dinner attendees — “Shouldn’t we at least just know who was at the dinner? Wouldn’t you want to know that list of people?” — Johnson again gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
“I guess,” he said. “I mean, again, I don’t know anything about that dinner. I do know that President Trump is the most transparent president in the most transparent administration probably in history. He has nothing to hide.”
Johnson’s justifications here are bizarre. He says he knows nothing about the dinner all while claiming Trump is being entirely “transparent” and “has nothing to hide.” But how would Johnson know that Trump is being transparent if Johnson himself is ignorant about the details of the dinner?
This is not the first time Johnson has claimed he simply doesn’t know enough to comment on the meme coin grift.
“I don’t know anything about the meme coin thing. I don’t know, I can just tell you that, I mean President Trump has nothing to hide. He’s very upfront about it. There are people who watch all the ethics of that, but I mean I’ve got to be concerned with running the House of Representatives,” Johnson told reporters on May 14.
“Congress has oversight responsibility, but I think, so far as I know the ethics are all being followed,” Johnson added.
Johnson has pleaded ignorance other times to wiggle out of addressing allegations of Trump’s corruption. When asked about Trump’s plans to accept a lavish private jet from Qatar’s royal family earlier this month, Johnson said, “Look, I’ve been a little busy on reconciliation, so I’m not following all the twists and turns of the Qatar jet, I certainly heard about it. My understanding is it’s not a personal gift to the president, it’s a gift to the United States, and other nations give us gifts all the time, but I’m going to leave it to the administration.”
It appears that, under Johnson’s leadership, congressional oversight of the executive branch is deemed unimportant when the corruption of a Republican president is in plain sight. As for Trump, he’s planning on raking in as much cash as he can in his second term after deciding it was “stupid” that other Republicans and his own advisors convinced him to temper his corruption during his first term, sources told Rolling Stone last week.
