‘another Reminder’: Capitol Hill Braces For Trump Ethics Standoff Over Crypto Bill

A new controversy over President Donald Trump’s ties to the cryptocurrency industry is sharpening Democratic demands that a sweeping digital assets bill include a provision reining in the first family’s crypto empire.

Even as the White House presses Congress to pass the industry-friendly legislation, the Trump family’s growing crypto businesses are emerging as an unavoidable obstacle after news that an Abu Dhabi royal backed a $500-million investment in a Trump-linked venture called World Liberty Financial.

The Abu Dhabi deal, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is hardening Democrats’ resolve to include ethics guardrails in the bill and setting up a major standoff. And because Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass the legislation, it’s giving lawmakers on the left a rare point of leverage to address long-festering ethics concerns about the Trump family’s business dealings.

“It has created more of a sense of moral urgency for us to have ethics as part of this,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is considered a pro-crypto Democrat. “The Trump administration has demonstrated the grossest, most egregious corruption from the White House we have ever seen.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who has been involved in negotiations over the legislation, said the bill needs to include ethics language that doesn’t “treat the president differently than any other federal employee.” “If anybody needed another reminder, they just got it,” he added.

The coming clash will mark a major test of bipartisan dealmaking in the Trump era. Both Republicans and Democrats have made clear their appetite for passing the bill. Yet, to do so, Democrats who have loudly expressed outrage over the first family’s crypto dealings will need to strike a deal with a White House that has rejected the notion that Trump faces any conflicts of interest from his family’s and friends’ businesses.

Hanging over it all is the massive war chest that crypto firms have built to spend on industry-friendly candidates and lawmakers — and against those who oppose the bill. If the White House won’t budge on an ethics provision that is acceptable to the left, Democrats could still face political pressure to support the bill due to the money looming over the 2026 midterm elections. Fairshake — a crypto super PAC group backed by industry giants like Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz — recently disclosed that it has more than $190 million on hand heading into the midterms.

A yearslong industry priority, the so-called crypto market structure bill, would divvy up oversight of crypto trading in the U.S. between Wall Street regulators. Crypto executives and lobbyists who have been fighting for such legislation say it would finally provide the market with the needed regulatory legitimacy for digital assets to become part of the financial mainstream. The Senate Agriculture Committee, which is in charge of one-half of the bill, advanced its portion last month in a party-line vote, while the Senate Banking Committee is still working through its part.

Yet, with the support of at least seven Democratic senators needed, the bill’s fate could ultimately hinge on whether Republicans and the White House will agree to separate Trump and his family from their rising crop of lucrative crypto ventures.

Democrats, led by Schiff and Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, have negotiated for months with Republicans and White House officials over ethics language. But they’ve been unable to clinch a deal, and talks are now in a lull as the White House works to solve other outstanding issues with the bill.

Republicans have largely brushed aside the concerns about the Trump family’s businesses, but have shown a willingness to strike an ethics deal in order to unlock bipartisan support for the so-called market structure bill. They have largely deferred to the White House on what an acceptable compromise would look like. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a crypto-friendly Wyoming Republican who has been involved in the ethics negotiations, said in an interview she views concerns about the Abu Dhabi investment in World Liberty as just “another attack on Trump that is pretty baseless, to be honest.”

“How far do you have to separate yourself from the financial decisions of your children before you take serious criticism?” Lummis said.

But even Lummis acknowledges the Abu Dhabi deal presents a new headache. “It does,” she said. “But it shouldn’t.”

Indeed, Gallego said the deal “reinforces why we have to have ethics as part of the final market structure bill.”

The Abu Dhabi deal centered on World Liberty, a crypto venture that Trump and his sons rolled out in the heat of the 2024 presidential race. Under the terms, a company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan acquired a 49 percent stake in World Liberty for the $500 million investment — $187 million of which went to Trump-affiliated entities, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A World Liberty spokesperson, David Wachsman, has since confirmed the deal in a statement while noting that Trump was not involved in the transaction and currently has no role with the company. Wachsman added on Wednesday that “World Liberty Financial is not a political organization.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.” White House counsel David Warrington said Trump “has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities.”

“President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest [otherwise] is either ill-informed or malicious,” Warrington said.

The investment has, nonetheless, spurred new ire about Trump’s expanding crypto empire.

Democrats and ethics experts have repeatedly raised concerns about Trump-linked crypto dealings over the last 18 months. But the Abu Dhabi deal, for many, stands apart.

“We’ve all become a little inured to Trump and Trump family conflicts of interest and transgressions of traditional norms,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of the liberal-leaning consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “But this is categorically different than anything that has come before and fundamentally compromising of our foreign policy. Hopefully, this reality will, at minimum, spur inclusion of ethics provisions in the bill.”

Billionaire GOP megadonor Ken Griffin, when asked about the deal at an event Tuesday, said “this administration has made missteps in choosing decisions or courses that have been very, very enriching to the families of those in the administration.”

“And that calls into question: Is the public interest being served?” said Griffin, who applauded other moves from the administration during his remarks. “There’s just a necessity for us as a society to reembrace some of the critical concepts of ethics in public services.”

Ethics is just one part of the to-do list still surrounding the bill — and far from a new one. Lawmakers and the White House are also working to resolve a lobbying clash between banks and crypto firms that has split Republicans and jeopardized the bill’s path to advancing out of the Banking Committee.

But the ethics issue is likely to be in the spotlight if the bill moves toward the Senate floor. And the new Trump deal is giving more fuel to crypto critics.

“Every time the crypto industry has tried to move their bill forward, a lot of folks in Congress who want to support it have had to look the other way on the ethics issue,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee. “This latest apparent bribe from the UAE, that puts our national security at risk, means that crypto supporters now have to overlook an even taller steaming pile of corruption.”