Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Elissa Slotkin are calling for a federal ethics investigation into former President Donald Trump, his family, and senior administration officials over their connections to World Liberty Financial (WLF), a cryptocurrency firm backed by the Trumps and the Witkoff family.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the acting inspector generals of the Commerce and State Departments, as well as the Office of Government Ethics, Warren and Slotkin requested a review of the roles played by White House AI and Crypto adviser David Sacks and U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff, serves as CEO of WLF, which lists Trump and his three sons as co-founders.
The lawmakers’ request follows a recent New York Times investigation that highlighted a sequence of transactions raising concerns about conflicts of interest and national security. According to the report, UAE-based investment firm MGX pledged $2 billion to crypto exchange Binance using WLF’s newly issued USD1 stablecoin. Within weeks of that deal, the Trump administration approved the transfer of hundreds of thousands of advanced U.S. artificial intelligence chips to the UAE—technology Warren and Slotkin described as “sensitive national security assets.”
Spokespeople for the White House and WLF denied that the crypto transaction and the chip approval were linked. The White House declined to provide additional comment to other outlets covering the story.
Eric Trump defended his family’s involvement in the company during a recent CNBC interview, saying:
“My father’s the first guy who hasn’t made money off the presidency. We’ve always been serial capitalists. Crypto came out of a necessity that we were debanked by everybody and needed to find a new way.”
Warren and Slotkin, however, warned that the arrangement suggests senior officials may have used their government positions to benefit personally.
“The pattern of these transactions is deeply troubling,” they wrote, urging watchdogs to act quickly.
The probe request comes as Congress debates sweeping crypto legislation. Both the House and Senate are working on separate versions of a market structure bill, though progress has slowed amid broader budget negotiations. Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, has been a vocal critic of the crypto industry and argued that transparency is critical as lawmakers craft new rules.
“Such unbridled conflicts of interest have no place in the U.S. government,” Warren and Slotkin wrote. “This information is also critical as Congress considers legislation for digital asset market structure and attempts to ensure that crypto corruption does not undermine our national security.”
The call for oversight adds a new layer of tension to Washington’s crypto debate, intertwining questions of national security, ethics, and financial innovation.
