Democrats in the House are putting pressure on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over World Liberty Financial’s push for a national trust bank license, saying it poses a systemic danger.
Democrats in the US House of Representatives are putting pressure on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about how regulators are dealing with World Liberty Financial’s request for a national trust bank license to issue a dollar-backed token.
In a letter sent on Thursday, 41 Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Representative Gregory Meeks, talked about systemic risk, foreign ownership, and possible political pressure on the process of getting a bank charter.
They wanted Bessent to explain what protections are in place to stop foreign government officials or investors with ties to politicians from exploiting the charter process to obtain power over the US financial sector.
Source: Meeks.house.gov
Concerns over foreign ownership and political influence
The lawmakers said that a senior royal from the United Arab Emirates quietly bought almost half of World Liberty Financial for about $500 million. This included $187 million that went to companies connected to Trump. The company was trying to get a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
They said that the mix of digital asset trust structures, untested liquidity and resolution procedures, and foreign political interests brought up problems that regulators “can’t afford to ignore.”
Democrats also asked if Executive Order 14215, which they believe brought historically independent financial regulators under closer White House control, could hurt the OCC’s ability to make its own decision about World Liberty’s application.
The letter requests Bessent to write back by Thursday and explain what the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Treasury Department do when it comes to OCC charter decisions.
Heightened attention around Trump-Linked Crypto initiatives
The letter comes at a time when World Liberty Financial and other Trump-aligned crypto projects are getting more attention in Washington and on Wall Street. For example, a crypto event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on Wednesday drew a lot of attention from both crypto and traditional finance executives, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.
As the event got closer, the WLFI coin linked to the Trump family-aligned platform went up by 23%. Organisers advertised the event as a chance to show off World Liberty’s roadmap and its place in the larger crypto market.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of the Senate Banking Committee told Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday not to use taxpayer money to stabilise the crypto markets. She said that helping “cryptocurrency billionaires” would be a moral hazard and would shift losses from big investors to taxpayers.
Warren’s letter set up possible rescue plans for big crypto companies and investors as a way to see whether authorities would give the digital asset sector the same protections that banks have. This is happening while regulators think about new charters and monitoring for crypto-linked businesses.