Illustration: Kelly Caminero/HuffPost; Photo: Getty Images

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is taking his efforts to use his office for personal enrichment — the very definition of corruption — to new levels Thursday night, selling face time to those who put money into his bank account by purchasing nearly $200 million worth of his branded souvenir crypto coins.

And while Trump will know who has parted with all that cash for the opportunity to spend a few hours to bend his ear, Americans will not — unless they can somehow match real names to monikers like “MeCo,” “CASE, “GAnt” and “REKT.”

Those four individuals or organisations, identified only by their usernames and crypto “wallet” addresses, collectively owned 2.7 million $TRUMP coins, worth a total of $38.3 million on Wednesday, based on the $14 price per coin that day.

“He’s auctioning off access,” Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Thursday. “It’s corrupt and it’s out there for everyone to see.”

Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College historian, said Trump’s open corruption is unprecedented in American history. “Interestingly, the real financial corruption in an administration is around the president, not usually the president himself,” she said.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the crypto coin business “has nothing to do with the White House.”

Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, denied Trump was doing anything wrong and instead attacked the news media for correctly reporting on his two federal prosecutions, his criminal conviction for falsifying business records and the civil judgment against his company for massive fraud. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public, which is why they overwhelmingly reelected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” she said.

Trump began selling his new tokens three days before his inauguration. The coin, which has zero intrinsic value, soared in price to as high as........

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