Senators seek probe of Trump crypto venture over alleged token sales linked

Two U.S. Senators are pressing the Department of Justice and the Treasury to investigate a crypto company closely tied to the family of U.S. President Donald Trump over alleged links to illicit actors in North Korea and Russia.

In a letter on Tuesday, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., minority members on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, raised concerns that World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm heavily owned and run by the Trump family, may pose national security risks. 

The letter — obtained exclusively by CNBC and addressed to Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — argued that World Liberty Financial lacks adequate safeguards to prevent bad actors from moving funds or gaining influence over its governance.

The senators cited a September report from a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporate watchdog called Accountable.US, which said World Liberty Financial had sold its $WLFI tokens to “various highly suspicious entities.” 

Those entities included traders with ties on the blockchain to a notorious North Korean hacking organization, a sanctioned Russian “Ruble-backed sanctions evasion tool,” an Iranian crypto exchange and Tornado Cash, a known money laundering platform, the watchdog alleged.

CNBC has contacted World Liberty Financial for comment on the letter and relevant reports. 

The World Liberty Financial website lists family members Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump as co-founders. The website shows Donald Trump as a “Co-Founder Emeritus.” An entity affiliated with the U.S. President and some of his family members also holds major equity interests in WLF.

A number of the company’s “governance token” $WLFI were released for public trading in September, after earlier private investment rounds. WLF says holders of the tokens “play a key role in helping to shape the future of the protocol,” with the ability to propose and vote on company proposals. 

However, Accountable.US‘ investigation called into question who those holders were. The group’s report noted that World Liberty Financial had sold $10,000 worth of its $WLFI tokens in January to traders who had a history of transacting with a wallet that is now sanctioned for association with the North Korean state-sponsored hacking team, Lazarus Group. 

By selling the tokens, World Liberty Financial took money from people with “open and obvious connections to enemies of the U.S.” and raised national security risks by giving them “a seat at the table” to influence the firm’s governance, the senators alleged in their letter.

World Liberty Financial plans to continue expanding and launching new products, including a debit card and tokenized commodity assets. 

The letter from the senators noted these…