Democrat Congressman Urges US House Committee to Investigate Whether President Donald Trump’s Involvement with Crypto Breaches Ethics Obligations

Trump's family and close associates have launched several crypto projects recently, including the DeFi platform World Liberty Financial (WLF) and the memecoins

Democrat congressman, Gerard Connolly, has written to the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform urging it to investigate whether President Donald Trump’s involvement with various crypto schemes breaches his obligations under the Presidential Ethics Reform Act.

Trump’s family and close associates have launched several crypto projects recently, including the DeFi platform World Liberty Financial (WLF) and the memecoins $TRUMP and $MELANIA. In his letter Connolly claimed that Trump himself may already be profiting financially from these projects, raising serious questions about conflicts of interest and potentially compromising national security.

Connolly urged the Committee to hold Trump accountable for any ethics breaches, saying without action from the committee, “President Trump is not likely to uphold a single provision of the Presidential Ethics Reform Act, despite the bill being the Republican gold standard for presidential ethics.”

As evidence for this claim, Connolly pointed out that Trump hadn’t even met the established minimum standard for presidential transparency — releasing his tax returns.

Connolly claimed that Trump has taken political influence peddling from a “cottage industry” to a “global enterprise” with the launch of his crypto schemes.

He was particularly concerned about WLF, pointing out its largest investor is Chinese national and Tron founder Justin Sun, who has previously been charged with fraud and market manipulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Until Sun’s investment Connolly alleges WLF was “a bust”, with few token sales.

Now though, with Sun’s purchase of US$30 million (AU$47.5 million) of WLF token, the project has met its self-determined revenue threshold, meaning any subsequent revenue could be directly funnelled to Trump.

Connolly also noted that WLF won’t return a yield and seems to be a poorly designed investment vehicle, suggesting it “appears singularly designed to allow individuals to funnel money directly to President Trump.”

The Trump memecoins have a similar function, says Connolly, highlighting that Trump-associated entities own 80% of $TRUMP and a similar percentage of $MELANIA. At the time of writing, according to CoinGecko these Trump memecoins have a combined fully diluted market cap of US$37.5 billion (AU$59.3 billion).

Connolly pointed to concerns raised by ethics experts that these memecoins, like WLF, could function as an efficient way to funnel cash to Trump — essentially allowing anyone with enough money to buy influence with the US President in a very non-transparent way.

It’s not just stodgy old congressmen (who may or may not know how to turn on a computer) with concerns about the ethical implications of Trump’s crypto schemes. Posting on X / Twitter earlier today founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, aired similar concerns saying:

Buterin further explained that crypto also provides plausible cover for people seeking to bribe politicians, they can simply say they’re gambling on memecoins:

Because of these corruption risks the Ethereum founder urged all politicians not to launch crypto projects of their own, saying “this is all risky to democracy…I recommend politicians do not go down this path.”

Trump’s former White House Director of Communications, Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scarramucci, has also aired similar concerns, posting on X / Twitter shortly after the launch of $TRUMP: