OCC Gives Trump Family Crypto Firm Conditional Bank Charter, Warren Introduces Bill to Block It

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave conditional approval Friday, August 14, to World Liberty Trust Co.'s application for a national trust bank charter. The company is 38% owned by an entity affiliated with Donald Trump and his family, according to World Liberty Financial's own website.

Senator Elizabeth Warren didn't wait long to respond. On Saturday, she and nine other Senate Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Ruben Gallego, introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act, which would bar presidents, vice presidents, their immediate families, and senior officials from owning or controlling a bank that their own administration regulates.

"President Trump is now the first President in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank," Warren said in a statement posted by the Senate Banking Committee. "This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen, and Congress cannot allow it to stand."

What the charter actually does

This isn't a full-service bank taking deposits and issuing loans. It's a national trust bank, a narrower charter that lets World Liberty Trust Co. issue and redeem its USD1 stablecoin directly and manage digital asset custody without going through a third party, according to Cryptonomist and TradingView. Right now the company relies on BitGo for that stablecoin work. Cutting out that middleman means more revenue staying in-house.

The charter also lets the firm operate across state lines without navigating individual state regulators, per Cryptonomist. It's conditional, not final. World Liberty still has to raise capital and clear more steps before the OCC signs off completely, according to TradingView.

The approval came from the OCC under Jonathan Gould, a Trump appointee, according to Mother Jones. Warren had asked Gould back in January to delay reviewing the application until Trump divested from the company, warning the arrangement would let him effectively oversee his own bank, per TradingView. Gould approved it anyway.

The money involved

Trump's financial stake here is not small. He disclosed nearly $600 million in income from World Liberty token and equity sales, according to Cryptonomist. ABC7 puts Trump's total business revenue from family crypto ventures north of $1.4 billion based on his financial disclosures. Mother Jones reports Trump made $65 million in 2025 alone selling World Liberty Financial shares.

DT Marks DEFI LLC, the Trump-linked entity, along with Trump family members, also holds 22.5 billion of World Liberty's governance tokens, according to Cryptonomist. ABC7 reports the family secured around $5 billion in value in the token's first days after launch.

Zach Witkoff, World Liberty's co-founder and son of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, pushed back on the corruption framing. He said the company "welcomes continuous scrutiny from federal regulators for many years to come," according to TradingView, and separately wrote that the goal is "to build the most trusted and widely used digital dollar in the world," per Mother Jones.

World Liberty Financial spokesman David Wachsman made a similar case to Newsweek: "Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is running towards regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it." He argued the national charter means permanent OCC supervision, regular examinations, and full application of anti-money laundering and consumer protection law, "regardless of the Trump administration."

The fair counterargument

A national trust bank charter subjects the firm to federal exam cycles and capital requirements that an unregulated stablecoin issuer would never face. If the goal is consumer protection, more oversight, even Trump-era oversight, beats none. World Liberty's argument that regulation outlasts any single administration has merit.

The underlying problem remains: the regulator making this call reports, through the Treasury Department, to the same administration that financially benefits from the approval. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told ABC7 the president "only acts in the best interests of the American public" and said no conflict exists because Trump's assets sit in a blind trust managed by his children. A blind trust that the beneficiary's own family runs, and whose holdings are publicly disclosed down to the token count, is not blind in any meaningful sense.

What happens next

Warren's bill would require federal regulators to review banking approvals granted after January 20, 2025, and terminate charters or deposit insurance for covered individuals who violate the ownership caps, according to the Senate Banking Committee text. With Republicans controlling both chambers, the bill has no clear path to passage. No investigation into the OCC's decision-making has been announced, and no charges or formal ethics complaint has been filed against Gould or the White House as of this writing. World Liberty still needs to raise capital before the charter becomes final, meaning the real test of how this operates as a functioning federal bank is still ahead.