US Senator Elizabeth Warren is pressuring the country’s banking regulator to hold off on considering World Liberty Financial’s bid for a bank charter until US President Donald Trump divests his interest in the crypto platform.
In a letter on Tuesday, Warren asked Comptroller of the Currency, Jonathan Gould, to delay reviewing World Liberty’s application for a national trust bank until Trump “eliminates all financial conflicts of interest involving himself or his family and the company.”
“We have never seen financial conflicts or corruption of this magnitude,” Warren said. “The United States Congress failed to address them when it passed the GENIUS Act into law — so it is incumbent for the Senate to address these real and serious conflicts of interest as it considers crypto market structure legislation.”
A World Liberty subsidiary, WLTC Holdings, filed with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency earlier this month for a bank charter allowing it to issue, custody and convert its stablecoin, USD1.
President Trump and his sons Barron, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are listed as World Liberty’s co-founders, and the platform has generated billions of dollars in paper wealth for the family.
Warren has “no confidence” in OCC’s Gould
The stablecoin-regulating GENIUS Act, which Trump signed into law last year, set up the OCC as the main regulator for stablecoin issuers, and the bureau is responsible for approving applications and supervising such companies.
Warren told Gould she had “no confidence that you will fairly assess the application pursuant to the legal standard for approval” due to his past dismissal of questions asking how he would ensure Trump would not influence the OCC.
She added that Gould would be in charge of rules that influence the profits of World Liberty and would be responsible for enforcing laws against it and the company’s competitors.
“You would be in charge of these functions while serving at the pleasure of the President,” Warren said. “In effect, for the first time in history, the President of the United States would be in charge of overseeing his own financial company.”
Related: Bitwise CIO calls Bitcoin 401(k) restrictions ‘ridiculous’ as Warren presses SEC
Warren is the most senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, which is set to debate a crypto market structure bill on Thursday.
The Senate Agriculture Committee was originally set to debate the bill at the same time, but the committee’s Republicans on Monday delayed that until later this month to garner more bipartisan support, as some lawmakers had pushed for the bill to include conflict-of-interest guardrails.
A Banking Committee draft of the bill released on Monday showed there was no inclusion of ethics provisions as requested by Democrats, but further negotiations and amendments are expected before it advances.
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