- Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters have written to SEC Acting Chair, Mark Uyeda, to request information regarding the Trump-family owned DeFi project, World Liberty Financial.
- The request comes amid concerns that President Trump’s close ties to the project may be influencing the regulator’s decision-making around the crypto industry and undermining its primary role of protecting investors.
Senior figures in the US Democratic Party have written to the US Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) acting chair, Mark Uyeda, asking the regulator to keep and share any communications related to the Trump family’s DeFi project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI) so that potential conflicts of interest can be assessed.
Elizabeth Warren, the most senior Democratic member of the US Senate’s banking committee, and Maxine Waters, the most senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, requested the SEC provide them with virtually all its documentation and communications — both internal and external — related to WLFI by April 14.
The pair wrote they needed the information to “help us better understand the extent to which the Trump family’s financial interest in World Liberty Financial may be influencing your and the Commission’s activities, and whether this conflict of interest may be interfering with its mission to protect investors and maintain fair and orderly markets.”
When the President and his immediate family stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars from an industry the SEC regulates, the American people deserve transparency about how the Commission is maintaining its independence and fulfilling its obligations to the public, not the President’s personal financial interests.
Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters letter to Mark Uyeda
They argued that insight into SEC’s dealings with WLFI was needed in order for Congress to perform its “Constitutional oversight responsibilities.”
Related: Report Reveals Trump Family Now Holds Majority Stake in Crypto Company
The letter specifically requests:
- All records and communication regarding the project since October 15, 2024.
- Any records related to the SEC’s decision to pause its case against Justin Sun.
- Any communications the SEC has received from the White House or the Trump family regarding WLFI
- All the agency’s internal deliberations regarding WLFI.
The letter also requested any information regarding procedures or policies put in place at the SEC to prevent the Trump family’s financial stake in WLFI influencing the regulator’s decision making.
Trump Profiting from WLFI Undermines Regulation, Say Senior Democrats
Warren and Waters describe WLFI as a “cryptocurrency company directly tied to President Trump and his family”, and added that a WLFI SEC filing from October 2024 lists “President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump as affiliated with the company”.
They pointed out that:
- Last month WLFI reported over US$500 million (AU$790m) in exempt securities sales of its $WLFI governance token and announced further plans to launch a stablecoin known as USD1.
- The Trump family is set to be the primary beneficiary of these initiatives, with WLFI’s insider-friendly structure funnelling 75% of revenue from token sales and 60% from operations directly to the family.
- Based on current revenue the Trump family is set to receive around US$400 million (AU$641 million), and things are just getting started.
The Democrats said Trump’s stake in WLFI “represents an unprecedented conflict of interest”, potentially undermining the ability of the Trump administration to fairly and effectively regulate the crypto industry. This huge conflict of interest creates “an obvious incentive for the Trump Administration to direct federal agencies, including the SEC, to take positions favorable to cryptocurrency interests that directly benefit the President’s family”, they wrote.
One example cited of this conflict of interest in action is the curious case of Tron founder Justin Sun, who until recently was facing serious SEC charges for alleged market manipulation and wash trading of Tron’s native TRX token. After Sun tipped US$75 million (AU$120 million) into WLFI though (and became the project’s single largest investor), all those charges suddenly went away — the SEC announced in February 2025 it had paused all charges against him.
In a response provided to Reuters, a WLFI spokesperson said “it’s disappointing that Senator Warren is attempting to weaponize the power of the government to continue to harass and target the Trump family and our project.” The spokesperson labelled the letter’s allegations as “completely disgusting, false, and dangerous”.
With a Crypto-Friendly SEC, Democrats Wary of Overreach
Since Trump took office in January the SEC has become significantly more crypto-friendly, dropping a swathe of cases against cryptocurrency companies, including those against Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Consensys, Uniswap Labs, OpenSea, Robinhood and Crypto.com.
On Wednesday, Representative Waters announced she wouldn’t be supporting the stablecoin legislation known as the STABLE Act, until the President’s conflicts of interest are addressed, saying “If there is no effort to block the President of the United States of America from owning his stablecoin business…I will never be able to agree on supporting this bill, and I would ask other members not to be enablers.”
Related: Stablecoin Giant Circle Files for IPO, Aiming for NYSE Listing Under ‘CRCL’
Waters also suggested Trump could be planning to use WLFI’s stablecoin, USD1, to replace the US dollar, saying:
Trump likely wants the entire government to use stablecoins from payments made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to Social Security payments, to paying taxes. And which coin do you think Trump would replace the dollar with? His own, of course.
Representative Maxine WatersCredit: Source link
