Five ranking Senate Democrats on Friday, July 10, renewed their push for congressional hearings into President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency businesses, pointing to a newly released federal financial disclosure that shows the president and his family took in more than $1 billion tied to digital assets in 2025 — much of it from ventures with foreign and unnamed investors.

The demand came in a joint statement from Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee; Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; Gary Peters of Michigan, ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; Dick Durbin of Illinois, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee; and Ron Wyden of Oregon, ranking member of the Finance Committee. All five wrote to the Republican chairs who control whether any hearing actually happens.

The trigger was paperwork. Trump’s 927-page annual financial disclosure, released by the administration on June 30, showed the president reported at least $2.24 billion in total revenue for 2025. Of that, more than $580 million came from crypto-related income, including roughly $515 million from World Liberty Financial token sales and about $65 million from selling equity in the venture’s holding company. Trump also reported $635 million in royalties from “Celebration Coins,” the disclosure line tied to his memecoin business. Add it together and the crypto-linked haul clears $1 billion, with some tallies putting it closer to $1.4 billion.

For the everyday reader, the money question is less about the size of the number and more about who is on the other side of these deals. The senators’ central worry is World Liberty Financial, the decentralized-finance and stablecoin project the Trump family launched in 2024. Public reporting has pegged a 49% stake in the venture to a group linked to the United Arab Emirates, purchased for roughly $500 million four days before Trump’s second inauguration, with about $218 million paid upfront to entities tied to the Trump family and to the family of Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. A separate chunk of the company — about 25%, according to the senators — is held by unspecified third parties the public cannot identify.

The lawmakers argue that foreign money flowing into a sitting president’s business, followed by favorable American policy, is a combination Congress cannot ignore. In their earlier June letter, the senators wrote that the arrangement “marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.” They point to a run of decisions that followed the investment: administration approval of roughly $1.4 billion in arms sales to the UAE, authorization to sell 35,000 advanced AI chips to the Emirati firm G42 over national security objections, and moves to loosen crypto oversight, including disbanding the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.

There is also a live legislative angle that gives the fight real stakes. Trump is pressing Congress to pass the Clarity Act, which would build a federal regulatory framework for digital assets and split oversight between two financial regulators. He already signed the GENIUS Act into law last July, though that measure covered only stablecoins — dollar-pegged tokens like World Liberty’s USD1. The senators say it is a problem that the president is urging lawmakers to write the rules for an industry he is personally earning from. Senate Democrats have signaled they can slow or withhold votes on the crypto bills Republicans want, giving the minority a rare piece of leverage heading into a narrow pre-recess window.

The White House rejected the criticism flatly. Spokeswoman Anna Kelly called the joint statement “the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade,” and said plainly, “There are no conflicts of interest.” Kelly has separately argued that the administration’s expanded AI cooperation with the UAE was built to strengthen American technology leadership, with safeguards to prevent U.S.-origin technology from being diverted. Trump, in a White House interview last week, said there was “nothing illegal” or “wrong” with his ventures and noted that his son Eric Trump oversees his assets while outside firms manage the investments.

The practical hurdle for Democrats is arithmetic. Republicans control both chambers, so committee chairs alone decide whether hearings occur. A spokesperson for the Judiciary Committee pointed to a July 9 letter in which Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he has “consistently held the same approach to my oversight during administrations of both political parties” and faulted Democrats for not scrutinizing former President Joe Biden and his family more closely. Spokespeople for the other committee chairs did not immediately respond. Barring a change of heart from the majority, the Democrats’ demand functions less as a scheduled proceeding than as a paper trail — one they can wave every time Republicans ask for votes on the crypto bills the White House wants passed.

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