The U.S. government registered thetrilliondollardinner.gov around the time Donald Trump announced people who invested in the president’s cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, could win a chance to meet him, according to a lawyer who spotted the domain and 404 Media’s corroboration of those findings. The government also registered the domains dinnerforamerica.gov, and thetrillion.gov.
The domains signal that there may have been plans to incorporate official government internet infrastructure with the memecoin investment dinner, with the dinner already presenting ethical issues around the president promoting certain investments he would personally profit from. At one point, at least one of the domains redirected to a Department of Commerce login portal, according to the lawyer.
A spokesperson for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), part of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed the .gov domains really were registered in an email to 404 Media. CISA said the Department of Commerce was the entity that requested the domains and directed further requests for comment to it. The Department of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment.
Alexander Urbelis, general counsel for the Ethereum Name Service, first flagged the domains to 404 Media. Urbelis has made a tool that automatically looks for newly registered domains, and previously found DEI.gov and Waste.gov. 404 Media later reported that the Waste.gov was using a WordPress theme placeholder page.
On April 23 the New York Times covered the planned dinner. An announcement the outlet pointed to called the dinner “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World.” A seat would be reserved for the top 220 investors into $TRUMP, a cryptocurrency Trump launched on the eve of the inauguration, the Times added. Urbelis said that after the Times reported on the dinner, the .gov domains were then unregistered.
The announcement for the dinner included in the Times report was hosted on the site gettrumpmemes.com, which is not an official government website. The bottom of the site points to a company called Fight Fight Fight, LLC. The dinner website says a leaderboard updates hourly, that attendees will “hear first-hand President Trump talk about the future of crypto,” and “Own $TRUMP—or watch from the sidelines.”
“Will YOU be Having Dinner with PRESIDENT TRUMP?” another section of the website asks, with a photoshopped image of Trump shaking hands with a silhouette with the word “YOU” written on it.
The Times reported that after news of the dinner invitation spread across social media, the value of the memecoin jumped more than 60 percent. The Times also reported that a business linked to Trump owns many of the coins, meaning that he personally profits every time the price increases.
