Senate's Warren: WLFI-tied bank application should be halted until Trump divests

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the crypto industry's most reliable critics in Congress, is calling for a halt to the efforts of World Liberty Trust Co. effort to become a U.S. trust bank until President Donald Trump divest his family's ownership stake in the related digital assets business.

Warren sent a letter on Tuesday to Jonathan Gould, the chief of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, where a company connected to World Liberty Financial Inc. is seeking a charter that could allow it to directly issue the USD1 stablecoin. She asked Gould to delay the application process while Trump continues to have a stake that may pose a conflict of interests.

"We have never seen financial conflicts or corruption of this magnitude," Warren wrote in the letter. "The United States Congress failed to address them when it passed the GENIUS Act into law — so it is incumbent for the Senate to address these real and serious conflicts of interest as it considers crypto market structure legislation."

Warren is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, where that legislation is set for a hearing on Thursday. A draft of the bill that emerged late Monday night didn't yet include any text on government ethics that had been requested by Democratic senators during lengthy negotiations over the bill. It's unclear where that issue will land as the committee prepares to consider amendments and potentially vote to advance the bill to the overall Senate.

The Massachusetts Democrat has routinely criticized the administration and president on similar points, and turned now to WLFI's banking aspirations.

"If the application is approved, you would promulgate rules that influence the profitability of the president’s company," she wrote to Gould, Trump's appointee. By extension, she argued, Trump would be in charge of government oversight of his own business interests.

Read More: Senate files again for major crypto bill with stablecoin-rewards compromise, DeFi protections