EXCLUSIVE — The nation’s top banking regulator is rejecting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) request to halt a bank charter application for World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency group founded by President Donald Trump and his allies in 2024.
WLF, which currently describes itself as a “decentralized finance” cryptocurrency firm, filed an application on January 5 with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to be a national trust bank. The comptroller approving a charter for WLF would allow the firm to issue USD1, a stable coin backed by the dollar that hit a market cap exceeding $3 billion last year. WLF has served as a primary wealth asset for the Trump family since its founding during President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Warren, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, sent a letter to Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould on January 13, urging his office to halt the review of WLF’s application until Trump fully divests from the company and eliminates all potential conflicts of interest. She argued that failing to do so would allow, “for the first time in history,” the president of the United States be in charge of oversight for “his own financial company.”
However, Gould, will send a letter back to Warren on Friday, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner Friday morning, stating that the independent agency “is committed to following all applicable laws and regulations, including those governing the chartering application and review process, for all applications submitted for the OCC’s consideration.”
“There are statutory requirements providing that the OCC must act within a prescribed period of time, and the Administrative Procedure Act instructs courts to ‘compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.’ Congress has made clear that the OCC has a duty to act on the applications it receives in a timely manner. The OCC intends to act consistent with this duty rather than your demand,” the letter reads.
Gould vowed to conduct OCC’s charter reviews, for WLF and all other applications, in “an apolitical and nonpartisan process.”
“After decades of decline in the number of de novo charters, it is vital the OCC return to normal order,” the letter concludes. “This means adhering to the law and reviewing all applications, including applications to establish national banks, in an apolitical, nonpartisan and objective manner, supporting both innovative and traditional approaches to the very old business of banking.”
Warren’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
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Since its founding, WLF has boosted the Trump family‘s wealth by more than $1 billion and has consistently been pointed to by the president’s critics as a significant conflict of interest given his administration’s championing of cryptocurrencies.
Reuters reported one day after Warren originally petitioned Gould to halt the WLF review that the firm had partnered with Pakistan to “explore using World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin for cross-border payments.”
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