The Manhattan hush-money trial of the former US president Donald Trump is in recess on Wednesdays, providing the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 US general election with a valuable window for campaigning. Today (8 May), Trump is using that window to have dinner with buyers of his NFTs (non-fungible tokens) at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago.
The dinner, first reported by Axios, is a perk for major buyers of Trump’s so-called “MugShot Edition NFT”, a series of “digital trading cards” offered at $99 apiece, some of which feature images based on the mug shot taken of Trump when he was arrested in Georgia in August 2023 on racketeering charges. (Other NFTs in the series, designed by the illustrator Clark Mitchell, feature Trump in place of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, Trump as a cyborg and Trump as a steampunk superhero.)
Supporters who bought at least 47 editions of the NFTs are invited to tonight’s dinner with Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, and will receive a piece of the suit he was wearing when the mugshot was taken. Supporters who bought 100 of the MugShot NFTs will receive additional perks including pieces of the suit and the tie Trump wore in the mugshot, seating at a VIP table during the dinner and a cocktail reception with Trump before the event.
The company that created the MugShot NFTs is not affiliated with Trump’s campaign, although the former president did record a video promoting the NFTs and the limited-edition physical cards featuring fragments of his suit—”it was a great suit, believe me, a really good suit”. According to Trump’s most recent financial disclosures, he made between $100,000 and $1m from NFTs in 2022. Trump’s campaign has offered plenty of physical products of its own monetising the famous photograph.
After Wednesday night’s dinner for mega-collectors of Trump NFTs, the former president will be back in court in Manhattan on Thursday morning, when his lawyers will resume their cross-examination of the adult-film star Stormy Daniels, the star witness in the hush-money case brought against Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg Jr. The case revolves around the reimbursement of hush-money payments to Daniels made by Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to keep her from telling the story of her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 (which he denies ever took place).
Melania Trump, the former president’s wife, has been far more active than her husband in the NFT space, releasing several series of digital collectibles in recent years commemorating everything from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, US monuments like Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty to “important moments” in US history, her own eyes and Christmas.
