Senate Democrats are demanding that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s top adviser, provide details on crypto investments and lack of divestment.
Senate Democrats sent Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, a letter Wednesday calling for more details about his personal crypto interests. Led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), eight senators asked Witkoff to explain why his latest ethics disclosure showed he still held stakes in a Trump-linked cryptocurrency as well as other crypto business entities.
“Your failure to divest of these assets raises serious questions about your compliance with federal ethics laws and, more importantly, your ability to serve the American people over your own financial interests,” the senators wrote.
World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm that Witkoff co-founded with the president in 2024, said in May that the special envoy was “in the process of completely divestment” from the project. Witkoff has since divested a $120 million stake in his real estate company, but has yet to sell his crypto holdings, according to his latest ethics disclosure, dated August 13.
The Trump advisor still owns cryptocurrencies for World Liberty Financial as well as shares of WC Digital Fi LLC, an entity mentioned in World Liberty Financial documentation as “an affiliate of Steve Witkoff and certain members of his family.” And, as of August, the special correspondent owned shares in two other apparently crypto-related companies: WC Digital SC LLC and SC Financial Technologies LLC.
Senate Democrats have claimed that Witkoff’s continued business interests in crypto raise potential conflicts of interest, as his role as a top diplomat in the Middle East allegedly overlaps with World Liberty Financial’s business ties to the United Arab Emirates.
Spokespeople for World Liberty Financial and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two offers
The investigation into Witkoff’s business interests comes a month after the New York Times has released an investigation into how its involvement in a multibillion-dollar AI deal between the U.S. government and the United Arab Emirates came at the same time that World Liberty Financial was negotiating its own multibillion-dollar deal with an Emirati state venture capital firm.
In May, the United States signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to build the largest AI campus outside the United States. Two weeks earlier, World Liberty Financial announced that a $2 billion investment by Emirati state investment firm MGX in crypto exchange Binance was paid for in World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, or $1.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies linked to underlying assets like the US dollar. The deal with MGX and Binance not only made USD1 one of the largest stablecoins by market capitalization, but also allowed World Liberty Financial to potentially reap tens of millions of dollars in interest on the assets backing the $2 billion in stablecoins it had just issued.
The timing of the two deals alarmed Democrats. Shortly after the New York Times released its investigation, two senators asked inspectors general to investigate whether there had been an ethics violation.
Wednesday’s letter has a broader range of signatories among senators beyond Schiff, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
They asked Witkoff for a response by October 31.
