US Senator Elizabeth Warren is pressing the country’s banking regulator to hold off on considering World Liberty Financial’s offer for the bank’s charter until US President Donald Trump relinquishes his shares in the crypto platform.
In letter on Tuesday, Warren asked Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould to delay consideration of World Liberty’s application to create a national trust bank until Trump “eliminates any financial conflicts of interest involving himself, his family and his company.”
“We have never seen financial conflict or corruption on this scale,” Warren said. “The United States Congress failed to address them when it passed the GENIUS Act – therefore it is the responsibility of the Senate to address these real and serious conflicts of interest as it considers cryptocurrency market structure legislation.”
Earlier this month, World Liberty subsidiary WLTC Holdings filed with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency an application for a bank charter to authorize the issuance, custody and conversion of a $1 stablecoin.
President Trump and his sons Barron, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are listed as co-founders of World Liberty, and the platform has generated billions of dollars in paper wealth for the family.
Warren ‘has no confidence’ in OCC’s Gould
The stablecoin regulation GENIUS Act, which Trump signed into law last year, established the OCC as the primary regulator of stablecoin issuers, with the office responsible for approving applications and overseeing such companies.
Warren told Gould that she had “no confidence that you would fairly evaluate the application under legal approval standards” because he had in the past deflected questions about how he would ensure Trump would not influence the OCC.
She added that Gould would be responsible for policies affecting World Liberty’s profits and would be responsible for enforcing the law against her and the company’s competitors.
“You would be responsible for these functions, 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 responsible for overseeing his own financial company.”
Related: Bitwise CIO Calls Bitcoin 401(k) Restrictions ‘Ridiculous’ as Warren Presses SEC
Warren is the senior-most Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, which is scheduled to debate the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act on Thursday.
The Senate Agriculture Committee was originally scheduled to debate the bill at the same time, but on Monday, Republicans on the committee postponed it until later this month to gain more bipartisan support as some lawmakers insisted the bill include guardrails against conflicts of interest.
The Banking Committee’s bill released Monday showed it did not include ethics provisions that Democrats had asked for, but more negotiations and amendments are expected before the bill is passed.
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