The Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement (MEME) Act makes it unlawful for covered federal officeholders — and certain close associates — to issue, sponsor, or promote financial instruments tied to pecuniary gain while in office and in limited windows before and after service. The bill casts a wide net over ‘‘covered assets’’ (traditional securities and commodities plus digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, meme coins, tokens, and NFTs) and creates both civil remedies (Department of Justice enforcement, disgorgement to the Treasury, and up to $250,000 in civil penalties) and parallel criminal penalties under Title 18.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill bars covered individuals and specified adjacent individuals from engaging in the issuance, sponsorship, or promotion of listed financial instruments during their term, during the 180 days before taking office and during the 180 days after leaving office. It adds a new civil enforcement subchapter to 5 U.S.C. chapter 131 and inserts a new criminal offense in chapter 11 of Title 18 with distinct criminal pathways (financial-harm threshold, bribery, and insider-trading cross-reference).
Who It Affects
Covered individuals include the President, Vice President, persons meeting the federal definition of a public official, and their spouses and dependent children; adjacent individuals include senior executive-service officials, uniformed officers at or above O–7, similarly classified executive branch roles as designated by OSC with OGE consultation, and their spouses/dependents. Market participants who issue or market assets tied to public officeholders will face enforcement risk if transactions implicate these persons.
Why It Matters
The measure extends traditional anti-corruption tools into the digital-asset and influencer-style endorsement space, closing a gap where public figures — or assets marketed using their name or position — could monetize office through token offerings or branded crypto products. It forces coordination between DOJ and regulatory agencies (SEC/CFTC) on hybrid asset enforcement and raises novel criminal and civil enforcement questions.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The MEME Act builds a statutory prohibition around three core acts: issuing, sponsoring, or promoting a ‘‘covered asset’’ for pecuniary gain. Covered assets are defined broadly to include standard securities and commodities and explicitly include digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, meme coins, tokens, and non-fungible tokens, as well as derivatives and funds built on those instruments.
The bill splits enforcement into civil authority under an amended chapter 131 of title 5 and criminal liability under a newly inserted section in chapter 11 of title 18.
Under the civil scheme, the Attorney General may sue covered or adjacent individuals who engage in prohibited transactions. A knowing violation exposes the individual to a civil penalty up to $250,000 and requires disgorgement of profits to the U.S. Treasury.
The prohibition applies while an individual serves in office, plus the 180 days immediately before assuming office and the 180 days immediately following departure. For adjacent individuals the bill preserves the applicability of section 208 of title 18 (existing conflict-of-interest law), but otherwise treats their conduct under the new subchapter.The criminal scheme imposes multiple pathways to prosecution.
One pathway targets covered or adjacent individuals who knowingly violate the prohibition and, as a result, cause aggregate losses of $1,000,000 or more or personally benefit from the sale, purchase, or distribution of the asset; that offense carries up to 5 years’ imprisonment. Separate provisions treat bribery-linked conduct tied to these transactions with enhanced fines, potential imprisonment (with statutory multipliers tied to gains), and disqualification from federal office, and a cross-reference to section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act expands exposure for insider-trading-style conduct with penalties up to 15 years.
Both the civil and criminal provisions contain language that any conduct constituting a prohibited financial transaction is deemed an ‘‘unofficial act’’ and therefore outside the scope of official duties for immunity analyses.Operationally, the bill creates several implementation pressures: agencies must identify which executive-branch positions count as ‘‘adjacent’’ beyond the enumerated SES and O–7 (the Office of the Special Counsel consults with the Office of Government Ethics), DOJ must build civil and criminal enforcement playbooks for hybrid digital-asset conduct, and courts will be left to interpret key terms such as ‘‘sponsorship’’ and ‘‘promotion’’ where social-media amplification or paid endorsements blur lines between private speech and office-driven influence.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The prohibition covers three acts — issuance, sponsorship, or promotion — of ‘‘covered assets,’’ a term that explicitly includes cryptocurrencies, meme coins, tokens, and NFTs alongside securities and commodities.
A covered individual or adjacent individual is barred from such transactions during service and in the 180 days before taking and after leaving office.
Civil enforcement vests in the Attorney General, authorizes disgorgement to the U.S. Treasury and imposes a maximum civil penalty of $250,000 for ‘‘knowing’’ violations.
One criminal path requires a knowing violation plus either aggregate U.S. losses of $1,000,000 or a demonstrable financial benefit from the illicit asset sale — the offense carries up to 5 years’ imprisonment.
Both the civil and criminal texts state that conduct covered by the prohibition constitutes an ‘unofficial act,’ removing official-duty immunity and signaling prosecutions and civil suits will not be blocked by official-immunity defenses.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title: MEME Act
The bill’s short title, the ‘‘Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement Act’’ or ‘‘MEME Act,’’ frames its focus on curbing financial exploitation by public officeholders. This is a naming convention, but it signals the drafters’ intent to tie the measure to both emoluments and newer financial instruments.
Sense of Congress
This non-binding preamble states congressional findings: public trust should not be used for private financial gain, and issuance or promotion of financial instruments by public officials undermines honest services and invites corruption. It does not create enforceable rights but helps courts and agencies interpret ambiguous provisions in the bill.
Civil prohibition, definitions, and remedies
The bill inserts a new Subchapter IV into 5 U.S.C. chapter 131. It defines ‘‘covered individual’’ (President, Vice President, public officials under 18 U.S.C. 201(a), and their spouses/dependent children) and ‘‘adjacent individual’’ (SES, O–7+ military officers, and other executive roles as designated by OSC in consultation with OGE). The new civil prohibition bars issuance, sponsorship, or promotion of covered assets during service and the 180-day pre/post windows. The Attorney General can bring civil suits; ‘‘knowing’’ violations carry civil fines up to $250,000 and mandatory disgorgement to the Treasury. The statute also clarifies that conduct violating this subchapter is an ‘‘unofficial act’’ for immunity analyses.
Criminal offenses, thresholds, and enhanced penalties
The bill adds a criminal offense in chapter 11 of Title 18 mirroring many of the civil definitions and prohibitions. It creates at least three criminal paths: (1) a general offense where a knowing violation that causes at least $1,000,000 in aggregate U.S. losses or produces a financial benefit exposes the actor to up to 5 years’ imprisonment; (2) a bribery-linked offense that multiplies fines against corrupt exchanges of value and can include disqualification from federal office; and (3) an insider-trading augmentation that incorporates section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and raises penalties up to 15 years where 10(b) violations apply. The criminal text repeats the ‘‘unofficial act’’ framing to limit official-duty immunity in prosecutions.
Table-of-contents and cross-code edits
The bill updates the statutory tables for both chapter 131 of Title 5 and chapter 11 of Title 18 to reflect the new entries. Practically, this forces OGE, OSC, DOJ, and regulatory agencies (SEC/CFTC) to coordinate on interpretation and enforcement, and it builds an explicit crosswalk between ethics law and criminal law for asset-based conduct involving public figures.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Government across all five countries.
Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Individual investors and the public — by creating a statutory barrier to the use of public office as a marketing or issuance vehicle, the bill reduces the risk that tokens, coins, or branded financial products tied to officials are used to exploit retail investors.
- Competing market participants — firms and issuers that do not leverage public officeholders gain a clearer competitive baseline because actors who would use official status to market assets face enforceable restraints.
- Office of Government Ethics and Office of Special Counsel — the bill supplies statutory scaffolding and definitions that give OGE and OSC clearer markers for which positions and relationships demand heightened scrutiny.
- Department of Justice — DOJ gains an explicit civil cause of action in addition to criminal tools, allowing parallel remedies (disgorgement and civil fines) that can be used when criminal prosecution is impractical.
- Regulatory agencies (SEC/CFTC) — the statute’s cross-references authorize clearer joint enforcement strategies over hybrid instruments by signaling congressional concern and focusing agency attention on digital-asset misconduct tied to public officials.
Who Bears the Cost
- Covered individuals and their families — the President, Vice President, public officials, and their spouses/dependent children face substantive limits on monetizing tokens, NFTs, or branded securities and may incur litigation, disgorgement, or criminal exposure.
- Adjacent individuals (SES members, senior military officers) — these senior civil- and uniformed-service officials and their families face new restrictions and potential criminal/civil liability tied to personal financial activity.
- Issuers, promoters, and platforms — entities that issue or market tokens, coins, NFTs, or related funds risk civil and criminal exposure if linked to covered persons and may need to tighten endorsement and marketing controls.
- DOJ and federal courts — additional civil suits and criminal investigations create enforcement resource demands; courts will see novel claims and be asked to resolve statutory ambiguities about ‘‘promotion’’ and ‘‘sponsorship.’'
- Campaigns and communications teams — political teams and contractors must build compliance gates around fundraising, branded merchandise, and any tokenized offerings to avoid triggering the statute.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is straightforward: Congress can and should block officials from monetizing public office and exploiting voters, but doing so with sufficiently precise, workable rules without sweeping in ordinary private activity, running into constitutional limits, or creating enforcement gaps in the fast-moving digital-asset space is hard; the statute trades clarity of prohibition for ambiguity in application, which shifts the fight from lawmakers to courts and enforcement agencies.
The bill raises several implementation and doctrinal knots. First, key operative terms — ‘‘issuing,’’ ‘‘sponsoring,’’ and especially ‘‘promoting’’ — are fact-intensive and will force early litigation or interagency guidance to calibrate conduct that ranges from paid endorsements to incidental social-media amplification.
Distinguishing a private investment from an impermissible use of office will hinge on context: whether the asset uses official title, whether the official had a material role in the offering, and the degree of pecuniary connection.
Second, the statute’s inclusion of digital assets and derivatives imports jurisdictional complexity. Enforcing against a token offered on a decentralized exchange implicates both SEC and CFTC authority and practical evidence-gathering challenges; proving the requisite ‘‘knowing’’ mental state for criminal liability may be difficult where promotions occur via intermediaries, influencers, or marketing agencies.
Third, the clause treating covered conduct as an ‘‘unofficial act’’ is a strong prosecutorial tool to avoid immunity defenses but also invites constitutional litigation (especially around claims of presidential immunity and separation of powers) and potential challenges that the law exceeds Congress’s reach if applied to incumbent Presidents.
Finally, penalty design and enforcement sequencing create trade-offs. The civil cap of $250,000 may be small relative to profits from a successful token sale, reducing deterrence absent disgorgement and reputational cost.
At the same time, overlapping civil and criminal exposure could raise due-process and double-jeopardy concerns in practice (parallel remedies generally permitted, but coordination and charging decisions will matter). The broad family coverage (spouses and dependent children) and OSC/OGE discretion to classify additional adjacent positions add administrative flexibility but increase the risk of uneven application across agencies and cases.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.