Warren Urges "No" Vote on Advancing Clarity Act

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, urged colleagues to vote against a cloture motion advancing the Republican-led Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, arguing the bill would benefit President Trump's personal crypto ventures at the expense of national security and investor protections.

In Senate floor remarks before the motion failed (see prior coverage), Senator Warren said that new ethics provisions negotiated between Senate Republicans and the White House would not stop the President from continuing to profit from crypto ventures such as World Liberty Financial and his memecoin. She said that enforcement of the ethics provisions would rest with the Attorney General, whom she described as unlikely to act against the President, and that the Office of Government Ethics could issue an opinion waiving the restrictions entirely. She also said the bill would not prevent the President from creating new crypto ventures or from placing holdings in what she called a "blind trust in name only."

Senator Warren said the bill would make it easier for terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and rogue states to use crypto to finance operations and evade sanctions, and harder for law enforcement to catch them. She said the legislation would also let companies unrelated to crypto move assets onto a blockchain to avoid securities-law investor protections, and would allow banks to use customer deposits for crypto lending, trading, and related activities.

She added that the bill would block states and tribal nations from enforcing consumer-protection laws against crypto fraud, citing criticism from the Indian Gaming Association. She called on Republicans to negotiate a bipartisan crypto bill and urged Senators to reject the current version in the cloture vote.