First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is preparing to use the gavel of the Senate Banking Committee to investigate President Donald Trump's family cryptocurrency businesses, with a committee aide saying the Massachusetts Democrat will make the Trump ventures a focus of her oversight once Democrats take control of the Senate in January.
Warren, the committee's ranking Democrat, is expected to become its chair when the 120th Congress convenes on January 3, 2027, after Democrats won control of both chambers in the November 3 midterm elections. A Warren banking committee aide laid out her agenda for the panel, The Block reported on November 9: four main areas — affordability, artificial intelligence, prediction markets and accountability — and warned that Big Tech chief executives, administration officials, Trump family crypto businesses, Wall Street executives and large corporations should preserve their documents and prepare to answer tough questions.
The chairmanship would give Warren powers she does not hold as ranking member. As chair she could issue subpoenas compelling documents and testimony; as ranking member her letters could only request them. The committee writes the Senate's crypto market legislation and oversees banks, deposit insurance, housing, the Federal Reserve and the financial regulators.
At the top of the list is World Liberty Financial, the decentralised finance venture associated with Trump's sons and members of special envoy Steve Witkoff's family, along with its dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD1, and the TRUMP memecoin. Reuters estimates the Trump family's crypto ventures have generated at least $2.3 billion since his return to office. Warren's minority staff said in July that Trump took in more than $1.4 billion from crypto ventures in 2025 — a partisan staff estimate that does not separate revenue from profit.
Warren has spent much of the past year pressing the issue. She has asked for an investigation into Trump's memecoin and an ethics probe into alleged conflicts tied to World Liberty Financial, the United Arab Emirates and Trump aides. On September 15 she wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Todd Blanche asking them to investigate potential national security risks involving World Liberty Financial, citing reports that a firm called Aqua 1 spent $100 million buying World Liberty tokens and reporting linking the firm to Guren "Bobby" Zhou, a businessman reportedly under investigation for money laundering in Britain. She asked whether gaps in anti-money-laundering rules or their enforcement could have allowed Trump-linked ventures to profit from illicit activity.
She has also challenged the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's conditional approval, in August, of a national trust bank charter for a World Liberty Financial affiliate, writing to Comptroller Jonathan Gould in May arguing that the approvals violate the National Bank Act. Critics have also questioned Trump's October 2025 pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.
Prediction markets are the other early target. Warren has repeatedly criticised the platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, and on October 28 she and Sen. John Curtis, Republican of Utah, wrote to the chief executives of both companies asking how they prevent insider trading around election-related bets.
The chairmanship is expected but not yet final: Democrats decide committee assignments in the coming weeks, and the Senate votes on them in January. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 6 that Warren is expected to lead the panel, with a competing bid seen as unlikely. The parallel probes are taking shape in the House as well, where Rep. Maxine Waters is expected to chair the Financial Services Committee and Rep. Robert Garcia is expected to lead the Oversight Committee, with inquiries into the Trump family's business dealings possibly starting as early as February 2027. No hearing date has been announced and no subpoena has been issued.