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Trump's $1.4B Crypto Haul Reshapes Senate Ethics Fight
Trump's $1.4B crypto disclosure gives Democrats new leverage to demand ethics rules in the CLARITY Act. With August recess looming, the bill's path hinges on whether Scott can bridge the gap.
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President Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income on his 2025 financial disclosure, a filing that gives Democrats new leverage to demand ethics provisions in the market structure bill headed for a Senate floor vote.
The disclosure, filed with the Office of Government Ethics, breaks down as $635 million in royalties from the $TRUMP memecoin, $527 million from token sales distributed by World Liberty Financial, and roughly $263 million from stakes in holding companies tied to the DeFi project's stablecoin arm. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter told NPR that federal conflict-of-interest statutes would bar any other executive branch official from comparable dealings. Trump, Painter said, “stands alone in having such substantial financial conflicts of interest” as president.
The White House rejected the conflict claim. Spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump had made the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.” The president has said outside institutions manage his investments without his involvement, according to NPR.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), a lead negotiator on the CLARITY Act market structure bill, responded to the filing by renewing her call for ethics guardrails. At the Consensus Miami conference in May, she said: “We cannot allow members of Congress, senior administration officials, presidents, or vice presidents to get rich off these industries because of their insider status.” She is also a co-sponsor of the End Crypto Corruption Act (S.1668), introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley with 19 Democratic co-sponsors. That bill would bar senior officials and their families from issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing cryptocurrencies, memecoins, tokens, NFTs, and stablecoins.
The Ethics Stack: What the Democrats Want
The Senate Banking Committee advanced a substitute amendment to the market structure bill on May 14 in a 15-9 vote. Two Democrats – Senators Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Angela Alsobrooks (MD) – voted yes but warned their support on the floor depended on ethics language. Alsobrooks called the Trump family “the most corrupt we’ve ever seen in the White House,” citing “planes, pardons, falsifying business records, and now crypto.” Gallego posted on X that “Trump is using the presidency to profit off the American people.”