Senator Warren questions Commerce Secretary Lutnick on Tether loan to family
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden sent letters to Howard Lutnick and Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino asking about a loan Tether reportedly made to Lutnick’s family.
What to know:
- Two prominent U.S. Senate Democrats are questioning Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and the CEO of Tether, Paulo Ardoino, about reports that the stablecoin company provided substantial lending to a trust that helped finance the transfer of Lutnick’s former company, Cantor Fitzgerald, to his adult children.
- Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden said that any such lending “would raise serious questions” about Lutnick’s relationship with the foreign stablecoin issuer.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Ron Wyden, who is the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked the leading global issuer of stablecoins whether it helped finance Lutnick’s multi-billion-dollar transfer of the financial-services company through trusts tied to his adult children when Lutnick complied with government ethics requirements after taking the Cabinet position.
“If reports of this loan are accurate, it would raise serious questions about the relationship between Secretary Lutnick and Tether, and the influence of Tether on Mr. Lutnick’s policy decisions,” the lawmakers wrote in both letters, which responded to reporting about the loans of unspecified amounts that first appeared in Bloomberg News.
Congress, with help from the administration of President Donald Trump, helped usher in a new law last year to govern stablecoin issuers, including Tether. CEO Ardoino was a front-row guest at a White House signing of that law, known as the GENIUS Act. Lutnick was also present for the celebration and has been a member of the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets that’s outlined and driven U.S. crypto policy.
