US Senator Elizabeth Warren accused Paul Atkins, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, of potentially lying to Congress about the agency’s enforcement numbers.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in: letter to Atkins on Wednesday that SEC enforcement data for fiscal year 2025, released on April 7, raised “significant concerns” about his answers at a Feb. 12 congressional hearing.
“During the hearing, I specifically asked you to comment on publicly available data indicating a decline in SEC enforcement activity,” Warren said. “In response, you demurred by stating that you were ‘not sure what data’ I was looking at.”
“It is now clear that my claim about the SEC’s cessation of enforcement actions was correct: the data you released last week shows that the number of enforcement actions initiated by the SEC was lower than at any point in the last decade,” she added.
The SEC has rolled back its enforcement against crypto companies under the Trump administration, settling or dismissing cryptocurrency-related lawsuits that the agency brought under the Biden administration, drawing criticism from some lawmakers.
Warren said the SEC’s enforcement data was “deeply disturbing” and showed it had “largely abdicated its enforcement responsibilities” as the agency’s enforcement activity dropped to its lowest level in more than 20 years.
She told Atkins that, in lightweight of the data, his responses at the February hearing “were deeply disturbing and raised concerns that you may have intentionally attempted to mislead the Committee about the SEC’s enforcement status.”
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Warren said the hearing took place more than four months after the end of fiscal year 2025, and “Atkins’ deflection and assertion that there is no certainty about the ‘data’ I have examined now appears to be deeply misleading and potentially intended to cast doubt on the now obvious fact that enforcement activities at the Commission under your watch have declined significantly.”
Warren’s letter asked Atkins a number of questions about whether he was aware of the SEC’s enforcement efforts at the time of his testimony and requested an explanation for the agency’s refusal to enforce the law.
The letter asked Atkins to respond to questions by April 28.
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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