Weekly Spotlight: Playing with fire
SEC skirts investigating suspicious crypto deals. Plus, the potential insiders making millions betting on war and the fight to save CIGIE.
How is this legal?
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is shirking its responsibility to investigate suspicious cryptocurrency deals — this, while our sitting president is shielding the industry from scrutiny, aggressively promoting crypto, and raking in more than a billion dollars from his crypto ventures. In fact, the SEC is presently neglecting to investigate a shady deal between the Trump family crypto business World Liberty Financial and Alt5 Sigma (now AI Financial Corporation) that made the family an estimated $500 million last year. An agency the president oversees, and whose mission is to protect investors, is looking the other way after Alt5 Sigma’s stock tanked and investors questioned dealings between the company and Trump’s crypto venture. It’s a failure of government ethics that the president is even allowed to profit from an industry he has influence over.
- Making matters worse: The Treasury Department has cleared the way for World Liberty Financial to operate as a bank, creating an “unprecedented” conflict of interest.
- Read more: Meet the Megadonors Who Have Poured $1.2 Billion Into the Midterms
TAKE ACTION If this isn’t the last straw, what will be? No president, present or future, should be allowed to self-deal while in power. But a loophole in ethics law lets them get away with it. We need to use this moment to make presidential and vice presidential profiteering illegal, once and for all. If we don’t close the loophole now, conflicts of interest this brazen will become the new normal. He said nobody cared. Don’t let him be right. Tell Congress to close the presidential conflict-of-interest loophole now. (Already emailed? Your support helps POGO fight against this loophole until it’s closed — give now.)
Playing with fire
(Illustration: Luna Velez / POGO)
Earlier this year, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was indicted for using classified Pentagon information about operations in Venezuela to make lucrative bets on the prediction site Polymarket. But the problem is bigger than just one rogue actor: Earlier this week, Polymarket referred dozens of accounts suspected of military-related insider trading to the Department of Justice (DOJ). As we’ve written, prediction markets create serious risks of corruption and conflicts of interest. Betting on war matters isn’t just base and disturbing; it could have real consequences for national security and people’s lives. Congress has more than enough reason to treat this as an emergency: We are actively at war. Your representatives must move quickly to increase oversight of, and regulate, this industry.
- The Anti-Corruption Data Collective published a report identifying the 152 accounts that made a collective $8 million betting on military matters, suspected of using insider information.
- Related: Does the new head of the DOJ have the public's best interests in mind? POGO’s David Janovsky assesses Todd Blanche’s record in a new commentary.
No SEC Probe of Trump Crypto Deal Despite Alleged "Illegality"
(Illustration: Luna Velez / POGO)
In matters involving the president and cryptocurrency, some experts say the Securities and Exchange Commission has abandoned its mission of protecting investors. By POGO’s Nick Schwellenbach and Political Wallet’s Jay Hunter. Read the breaking investigation.
- Our findings were covered in Gizmodo — check it out.
ICYMI: Inside ICE’s Broken System for Inspecting Detention Facilities
(Illustration: Luna Velez / POGO)
New data reveals a twisted ICE detention oversight system where facilities get glowing grades, even amid deadly conditions, write POGO’s René Kladzyk and Isabel Del Mastro. Read now.
- Our investigation was cited in a congressional letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin that raised grave concerns about conditions in ICE detention centers and demanded immediate intervention. The letter is signed by 87 members of Congress.
Watchdogs in peril
(Photo: Getty Images; Illustration: Leslie Garvey / POGO)
Congress is on recess, but let’s not forget the blow it dealt before members left. In late July, Representative Clay Higgins (R-LA) introduced the Restoring Integrity and Efficiency to Inspector General Oversight Act, which, far from restoring integrity and efficiency to our government’s premier oversight system, would destroy its backbone. The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) oversees all the federal inspectors general (IGs), ensuring that IGs themselves are held accountable and that they have the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. The bill, if made law, would abolish CIGIE and move the work of coordinating IGs to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OMB’s director, Russell Vought, is renowned for his contempt for watchdogs and whistleblowers. In a new commentary on our website, former IG of DHS John Roth explains the situation and the stakes.
- COMMENTARY Congress Should Reject Newest Attempt To Defang Watchdogs: “CIGIE sounds like one of those obscure institutions in the corner of the government that we perhaps could do without, but hobbling this important organization is a far bigger deal than it appears on the surface.”
