By Michelle Conlin NEW YORK (Reuters) -Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren asked the U.S. securities regulator on Friday about its plans to supervise exchange-traded funds due to be launched by a company founded and majority-owned by President Donald Trump, citing concerns about conflicts of interest. "All SEC decisions and actions involving (Trump Media & Technology Group) and President Trump’s financial interests should be carefully managed to ensure that they are free from undue political interference and influence from the President and his administration," Warren said in a letter, seen by Reuters, to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins. The senator, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate's banking committee, requested Atkins preserve all communications about the deal between the president’s Trump Media & Technology Group and a cryptocurrency firm due to host trading of the ETF and other investment products, some of which will include digital assets.
Warren told Atkins that Trump Media’s announcement of plans to sell investment products that require SEC approval represented an "extraordinary conflict of interest” in which a sitting president is asking an agency he controls “to approve investments he controls.” The president, Warren said, "has attempted to assert his dominance over decision-making at independent agencies like the SEC." Trump Media responded in an emailed statement to Reuters: “Rather than acting to stop actual corruption on the stock market and the rampant, illegal naked short selling of stocks, Senator Warren protects hedge fund bosses and her rich donors while harassing and intimidating America-First companies.” PIVOT TO CRYPTO DRAWS SCRUTINY Given that Republicans have majority control of both the U.S. House and Senate, the Democratic Party has limited ability to call for public hearings or formal investigations. Warren's letter does not cite any legal authority that would compel the agency to honor her requests.
It requested a response by May 2. Trump Media's pivot to crypto is the latest move by the Trump family to establish beachheads in the industry as the president has promised to usher in a "golden age" for digital assets by easing enforcement and regulations. Those developments have drawn scrutiny from government ethics watchdogs because the president’s family stands to profit from his official decisions.
Since Trump was elected, the Trump family’s new crypto ventures have earned them hundreds of millions of dollars in fees alone.
