House Dems Raise Issue Over Potential Bribery, Fraud

Rep. Gerald Connolly, a ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform, Rep. Joe Morelle, a ranking member of the House Committee on House Administration, and Rep. Jamie Raskin

Several House Democrats are pressing the Treasury Department to submit any suspicious activity reports (SARs) on World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and the Official Trump (TRUMP) meme coin.

In a letter to Treasury Department Inspector General HIgh Bensent on Wednesday, Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA), a ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), a ranking member of the House Committee on House Administration, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that Bessent submit all SARs on WLFI and the TRUMP meme coin.

The Democratic lawmakers said Trump's involvement in crypto has raised "myriad concerns about potential bribery, influence-peddling, threats to national security, market manipulation, and/or predatory and deceptive practices targeting vulnerable Americans."

According to the lawmakers, the Trump administration adopted "a strident agenda of promoting crypto" and also moved to eliminate major regulatory guardrails in the crypto industry.

"This administration’s actions appear to be especially problematic given the substantial risk of corruption and abuse in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, which has come to the forefront in recent years with the dramatic rise of meme coins and other tokens linked to no underlying value or utility," they wrote in the letter.

The letter also mentioned TRON blockchain Founder Justin Sun, who saved WLFI after the DeFi project fell "dramatically short" of its initial fundraising goal by purchasing $45 million worth of the WLWI token.

As for the TRUMP meme coin and First Lady Melania Trump's MELANIA token, the policymakers said there is much potential bad actors, "including authoritarian governments and companies they control," may have bought into the coins.

"Moreover, the $TRUMP coin offering has also raised fears that the tokens may jeopardize national security because 'they allow foreign agents to buy large amounts of the token as leverage over Trump's policy decisions.'"

There was also the issue on whether the team behind the TRUMP meme coin may have "enabled insider trading" and may have also engaged in a "pump and dump" token scheme.

This is not the first time Trump's crypto projects have been questioned over potential conflicts of interest. There have also been concerns among crypto holders that they may have been "scammed by the first family" when they bought into the TRUMP and MELANIA coins.

The meme token is currently the world's fourth-largest meme token by market cap at $2.6 billion, according to CoinGecko on Wednesday. The TRUMP coin is trading at around $13 and is a far cry from its all-time high of above $44 in the early days of its launch.