Warren and Blumenthal ask the SEC to investigate the $TRUMP memecoin

What happened

Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, and Richard Blumenthal wrote to the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins, in a letter dated 3 August, asking him to 'exercise your authority to investigate the President's memecoin to detect any illegal fraud or unjust enrichment that the coin may have facilitated'. They are 'concerned that President Trump's memecoin scheme may constitute an illegal scam, such as a "rug pull"', and argue that an issuer 'need not completely withdraw from the market to effectuate a rug pull' because one 'can occur gradually over time'. The letter's figures are press estimates, which it cites: nearly a million investors lost over $3.81bn on the coin from its debut to the end of June while Trump made $636m, both from the New York Times, and the coin has fallen by nearly 98% from its all-time high. It also cites a minority staff report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of 27 July. No deadline is set. The letter was reported on 4 August by CNN, which says it was given the letter first.

Why it matters

The request arrives while the legislation covering the same question is stuck on it. CoinDesk reports that negotiators on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act are held up by a provision restricting officials' involvement in crypto projects, and that the White House had not answered a revised text sent the week before. Whether a sitting president may earn fees from a token he promotes is now both an unresolved obstacle to a market structure bill and a request on a regulator's desk. The senators' own case rests on newspaper reporting and on an exchange's explainer of what a rug pull is, rather than on onchain analysis or an agency finding, which is a measure of how much of the record on a token held by a million people sits outside official hands.

What is not settled

The SEC declined to comment and the White House referred CNN's questions to the Trump Organization. TRM Labs, whose analysis CNN reports, found that the coin 'does not have the hallmarks of a rug pull', and its analyst Ari Redbord said that does not settle whether the outcome was acceptable; the letter argues for the softer form of the same charge. CNN reports that the coin peaked at about $9bn on 19 January 2025, that Trump Organization affiliates held 80% of the supply, and that Trump has said he followed the law and left his finances to his sons. CNN's own page returns an error to this desk, so the article was read in the KRDO syndication of it. No investigation has been opened.