How a Trump Media deal with a crypto firm exposes potential conflicts of interest

Photo (left to right): Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, President Donald Trump, David Sacks and Bo Hines attend the White House Crypto Summit in Washington, Friday, March 7, 2025. Screenshot from the video: Happening Now: Trump Speaks At First White House Crypto Summit – The Hill. Article by Brian Slodysko. AP News – December 16, 2025.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Crypto.com was under siege. For more than a year, the firm had been investigated by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, part of an aggressive push to regulate the largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry. Financial regulators had told the company that enforcement action was likely. Then Donald Trump won the 2024 election, and the company’s legal peril dissipated. Crypto.com ramped up spending to a lobbyist close to Trump and donated $11 million to political committees tied to the Republican president, records show. Within months, the investigation was dropped. By August, Crypto.com announced it was plunging roughly $1 billion worth of assets into a venture with a new partner — Trump’s social media company. […]

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Video: Happening Now: Trump Speaks At First White House Crypto Summit (Streamed live on Mar 7, 2025) – The Hill