Senate Democrats sent Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, a letter Wednesday calling for more details about his personal crypto interests. Led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), eight senators demanded Witkoff explain why his latest ethics disclosure showed he still owned stakes in a Trump-linked cryptocurrency as well as other crypto business entities.
“Your failure to divest your ownership in these assets raises serious questions about your compliance with federal ethics laws and, more importantly, ability to serve the American people over your own financial interests,” wrote the senators.
World Liberty Financial, the crypto business Witkoff cofounded with the president in 2024, said in May that the special envoy was in “the process of fully divesting” from the project. Witkoff has since divested a $120 million stake in his real estate company but hasn’t yet sold his crypto holdings, according to his most recent ethics disclosure, dated Aug. 13.
The Trump advisor still owns cryptocurrency for World Liberty Financial as well as shares in WC Digital Fi LLC, an entity mentioned in World Liberty Financial’s documentation as “an affiliate of Steve Witkoff and certain of his family members.” And, as of August, the special envoy held portions of two other seemingly crypto-related businesses: WC Digital SC LLC and SC Financial Technologies LLC.
Senate Democrats claimed that Witkoff’s ongoing business interests in crypto raise potential conflicts of interest, as his role as top diplomat in the Middle East allegedly overlaps with World Liberty Financial’s business ties to the UAE.
Spokespeople for World Liberty Financial and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two deals
The inquiry into Witkoff’s business holdings comes one month after the New York Times published an investigation into how his involvement in a multibillion-dollar AI deal between the U.S. government and the UAE came at the same time that World Liberty Financial was negotiating its own multibillion-dollar deal with an Emirati state venture firm.
In May, the U.S. signed an agreement with the UAE to build the largest AI campus outside the States. Two weeks earlier, World Liberty Financial announced that a $2 billion investment from the Emirati state investment company MGX into the crypto exchange Binance was paid in World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, USD1.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets like the U.S. dollar. The deal with MGX and Binance not only made USD1 one of the largest stablecoins by market capitalization but also set World Liberty Financial up to reap potentially tens of millions of dollars in interest from the assets backing the $2 billion in stablecoins it had just issued.
The timing of the two deals has alarmed Democrats. Shortly after the New York Times published its investigation, two senators asked inspectors general to investigate whether there was an ethics violation.
Wednesday’s letter has a broader array of signatories from senators beyond Schiff, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
They asked Witkoff for a response by Oct. 31.
