Senate Democrats move to block Trump’s stablecoin payday

Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader of the United States Senate, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley plan to add an anti-corruption amendment to the GENIUS Act. These amendments tackle President Donald Trump’s ties to the cryptocurrency world. 

Senator Jeff Merkley shared an X post stating that passing the GENIUS Act without including their anti-corruption amendment would show that Congress was okay with Trump selling influence and access to those who can pay the most. 

Chuck Schumer is expected to support changes to the stablecoin bill to limit the president’s connections to cryptocurrency. 

Senators propose a new amendment to the GENIUS Act

On May 20, most members of the US Senate voted to move forward with the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act. The bill aimed to regulate the payment of stablecoins. However, some top Democrats wanted to add an amendment to the bill.

This amendment would prevent a US president from making money off stablecoins. This proposal comes after 18 Democrats voted with Republicans on May 20 to advance the bill, following a procedural vote that did not pass on May 8. 

Initially, according to reports from sources, crypto platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI) released its USD1 stablecoin in March. Trump and his 3 sons apparently head the crypto platform. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are actively involved in the management of the crypto platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI),  and Barron Trump is listed as the project’s “DeFi (decentralized finance) visionary.” 

Concerning President Donald Trump’s ties to the cryptocurrency world, critics have noted the president may still profit personally from legislation supporting stablecoins such as USD1 to be recognized as financial instruments in the US.

Apart from this, an Abu Dhabi investment company announced it would settle a $2-billion investment in Binance using USD1, permitting the president’s family to pocket the transaction fees.

To curb this, Democratic legislators have already called for an investigation into the president’s involvement with the platform. However, Zach Witkoff, a co-founder at WLFI, stated that most people just kept describing this as “ flawed.”

Senators investigate Trump’s “private, secret” dinner

Merkley and Warren are also preparing to respond to Trump’s exclusive dinner event, reportedly set to host up to 220 top buyers of his personal memecoin at his golf club. Among the attendees was Justin Sun, a billionaire and crypto entrepreneur from China. 

According to the senators’ plan, Merkley intended to join a protest in the Trump venue that would be staged by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen in alliance with a progressive political organization, Our Revolution.

On the other hand, Warren conducted a press conference with Merkley, Senator Chris Murphy, and public citizen representatives demanding that Trump release the guest list for the dinner. This was because most potential attendees remained anonymous even after several publicly declared they owned the wallets that bought the memecoin and were planning to attend.

Murphy described the dinner as a private, secret dinner in which individuals who had put money in the president’s pocket got access to him. He added that this was maybe the most corrupt of all the corruption. 

Furthermore, based on his argument, they were able to pay their way to get an audience with the President of the United States to ask for favorable national security concessions.

The White House did not respond to requests for comments.

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