A Republican senator named Family Crypto Ventures in his subpoena request
Senator John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and senior member Dick Durbin, urging an investigation into the use of the president's family connections.
9/23/20264 min read
The letter's content refers to the field of cryptocurrency.
The letter didn't name specific companies, but the cryptocurrency projects backed by the Trump Jr. family are publicly known. World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance project linked to the Trump family, generated $95.37 million in on-chain revenue between January 1 and September 15, 2026, according to CoinGecko research published on September 17. This places it seventh among all tracked cryptocurrency projects that don't issue stablecoins, surpassing Paxos, Phantom, and Aave.
Donald Trump Jr. also holds an undisclosed stake and serves as an advisor in American Bitcoin, the mining and treasury management company he co-founded with Eric Trump and Hut 8. The company's stock has fallen more than 95% from its September 2025 peak, forcing a 1:15 reverse stock split in July 2026 to maintain its Nasdaq listing.
President Trump's annual financial disclosure statement, filed in July, shows he earned over $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency-related sources in 2025, including approximately $635 million in memecoin royalties and between $515 million and $550 million from the sale of World Liberty Financial tokens. Blockchain analytics firm Nansen noted that approximately 989,000 wallets holding TRUMP memecoin have accumulated a total net loss of approximately $3.81 billion since the token's launch. All of that doesn't prove wrongdoing, and Curtis's letter doesn't accuse anything. It asks for testimony rather than drawing conclusions.
The connection to the recently failed bill.
This request comes seven days after the Senate failed to pass the CLARITY Act on September 15, and the specific provision that blocked that bill concerned the president's family's cryptocurrency interests.
The Republican version, released on July 22 and approved by the White House, would prohibit the president, vice president, members of Congress, senior officials, their spouses, and their direct employees from issuing or financing digital assets while in office, with civil penalties of up to $250,000 per day enforced by the Department of Justice and expiring on January 20, 2029. Democratic senators, who needed the votes to reach 60, rejected it, with Angela Alsobrooks objecting to the Department of Justice's enforcement and Ruben Gallego arguing that it did not cover income from cryptocurrency assets purchased before the law took effect.
The deadlock in the debate has failed. Senator Cynthia Lummis warned on September 6th that if the bill is not passed in this Congress, the next realistic chance of enacting comprehensive market structure legislation may not come before 2030. Markets predict the likelihood of the law being passed by 2026 at only around 15-19%.
Curtis's letter didn't mention the CLARITY Act. But this is the first time a Republican senator has publicly named family-run cryptocurrency projects as targets for investigation, a core issue that Democrats have used to block the industry's most important legislative priority. The internal rift within the party is noteworthy.
Why that probably won't happen.
Mr. Curtis is not a member of the Judiciary Committee and does not have the right to vote on this matter. A committee spokesperson confirmed receiving the letter and noted that the hearing schedule is very limited until the end of the year. Mr. Grassley declined to comment Tuesday afternoon, saying he had not read the letter. Mr. Durbin, the senior Democratic member, expressed support for investigating Mr. Trump Jr. while noting that Hunter Biden is scheduled to give sworn testimony before Congress in 2024.
Support from a high-ranking minority member and silence from the chairman are not the path to a subpoena on a majority-controlled committee. Republicans have nearly exhausted the subpoena machine to investigate Hunter Biden's foreign ties, as Curtis has stated, and he argues that ceasing its use now would not meet the standards the party set then. President Trump referenced the wedding report last week, saying his son repaid the Russian billionaire and that friends paying for weddings is common practice.
Assessment and Conclusion
Even if the committee never acts, the letter shifts the rhetorical stance on the ethics issue in a way that impacts cryptocurrency legislation. Until now, the argument that the president's family's interests in the cryptocurrency space need to be restricted by law has been almost exclusively raised by Democrats, making it seem like a partisan obstruction of a bill that enjoys bipartisan support. The fact that a Republican senator raised the same concern in writing, and specifically named cryptocurrency projects, makes that argument difficult to maintain when the CLARITY Act is brought up for discussion again.
This also raises the possibility of sworn testimony about how family-backed cryptocurrency projects were promoted and who benefited, which is currently absent from any public records. The financial disclosures only show income. They don't show how the transactions were structured or whether a close relationship with the president was invoked.
For the industry, the real risks remain unchanged and there are no benefits. The ethical dispute has now consumed a large portion of legislative capacity in a year that should have been dedicated to the substantive provisions of the CLARITY Act concerning market structure, custody, and the jurisdiction of the SEC and CFTC. Whether the next effort resolves the issue or remains deadlocked will determine whether the industry achieves legal clarity before the administrative path both SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig have declared they will pursue becomes the only viable option.
Disclaimer: The content in this article is for informational, research, data analysis, and reference purposes only regarding the cryptocurrency market. All opinions, assessments, forecasts, or opinions reflect the author's perspective at the time of publication and do not constitute investment advice, solicitations for buying or selling, trading recommendations, advertising, marketing, or promotion of any financial products, services, or cryptocurrencies. Mentions of projects, tokens, protocols, exchanges, wallets, or cryptocurrency service providers (CASPs) are for research, analysis, or informational purposes only and should not be construed as endorsements, recommendations, or guarantees in any way. HCCVenture does not broker, advertise, market, promote, or connect users in Vietnam with any cryptocurrency services from CASPs. HCCVenture does not accept asset custody, investment mandates, manage assets, or execute transactions on behalf of clients. All investment decisions are made entirely through the reader's own research (DYOR), evaluation, and responsibility; HCCVenture is not liable for any losses or damages arising from the use of or reliance on the information presented in this article.
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