NYT investigation alleges CFTC purged staff who questioned Trump-tied crypto firms

A New York Times investigation published Sunday morning describes a yearlong campaign at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to clear regulatory hurdles for three companies with deep ties to the Trump family, while purging the career staff who raised objections.

The story, by reporters Sharon LaFraniere and David Yaffe-Bellany, draws on agency records and interviews with more than 30 former and current staff members and company officials.

Three firms sit at the center of the reporting: Polymarket, Crypto.com and Gemini affiliate Gemini Titan. Each, per the NYT, needed CFTC sign-off for its prediction market ambitions, and each has a direct line to the president's family.

Polymarket received an investment from 1789 Capital, the venture firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr., who also serves as an unpaid adviser to the firm. Crypto.com is a business partner of Trump Media & Technology Group, with which it struck an exclusive deal last October to launch "Truth Predict" on Truth Social, President Trump's bespoke social media site. Gemini's founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, back American Bitcoin, the crypto firm co-founded by Eric Trump.

Senior career officials told the NYT they worried Crypto.com was not treating small bettors fairly, that Polymarket lacked adequate fraud protections, and that Gemini Titan had not completed the required review to open for business.

Then-acting CFTC Chair Caroline Pham and her senior counsel Brigitte Weyls intervened on each, according to the report.

By Christmas, two officials who had raised questions were placed on leave, barred from the office and put under internal investigation, per the report. Three others who had enforced laws involving cryptocurrencies allegedly met the same fate, with none being told what they had done wrong.

Staff "took away a clear message," current and former employees told the paper: "Don't cause trouble for those industries."

Pham left the chair's office in December to join MoonPay, a crypto company whose own prediction market push runs through an "exclusive" partnership with Polymarket. Weyls started in March as general counsel for Gemini Titan, the same company whose application she had pushed through.

In one episode the NYT highlights, agency employees were in the middle of examining Gemini Titan's submission when Weyls reportedly sent them a draft memo recommending the application be approved. That inverts standard practice, in which staff write recommendations for commissioners. The application was "swiftly approved."

Enforcement reversal 

The agency's broader enforcement record has plummeted compared to earlier administrations. Per the NYT, the CFTC has announced just two cases involving digital assets under the second Trump administration, both against individual operators, compared with more than 80 during the Biden years and more than two dozen during Trump's first term.

On prediction markets, the commission has filed a single case, against the U.S. Special Forces soldier accused of using classified information to bet on Polymarket about the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The CFTC also dropped at least five other crypto investigations, including a late-stage probe of a major exchange, according to the report. Three senior enforcement officials, including the division's chief counsel, deputy director and chief trial attorney, were themselves placed under internal investigation in spring 2025, with reasons as vague as "the handling of certain enforcement matters."

Looming over the story is the structure at the top of the agency. Chair Michael Selig, confirmed in December, remains the agency's sole commissioner as Trump has not yet nominated replacements for the four vacant seats. That gives Selig unilateral authority to file lawsuits and issue rules across two industries directly tied to the president's business empire.

The leaders of the House Agriculture Committee, which oversees the agency, recently urged President Trump to fill the vacant seats, though because no more than three CFTC commissioners may belong to one political party, filling the vacant seats would involve appointing Democratic commissioners as well as two additional Republicans. 

Chairman Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.) and Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) wrote in a joint letter that the CFTC will be "best served by a full five-member commission," delivering "better regulations, more durable rules, and more sensitivity to the divergent views of key derivatives market stakeholders."

Selig himself previously represented crypto firms as a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher before serving as chief counsel to the SEC's Crypto Task Force. His predecessor as Trump's nominee, Brian Quintenz, had his nomination pulled at the end of September after the Winklevoss twins lobbied against him, the NYT reported, because he allegedly refused to commit to backing a Gemini complaint against the agency's own enforcement attorneys.

Responses to the report

The White House pushed back on the report's findings. "President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public," spokesman Davis Ingle told the NYT. "There are no conflicts of interest."

In comments to the NYT, Polymarket said it has strong safeguards. Crypto.com said it fully abides by all federal regulations. Gemini did not respond to the paper's questions. Pham and Weyls did not respond to requests from the NYT for comment.

Some online reactions were sharp. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a consistent congressional critic of the prediction market industry, wrote on X that "the CFTC has become a craven tool of prediction markets & shady crypto firms—ignoring national security risks while bullying state regulators & retaliating against staff attempting to enforce the law."

In a follow-up post, Blumenthal urged Congress to slow down on crypto legislation. "Congress cannot continue to ignore Trump's crypto corruption—favorable treatment & settlements for its business partners—as it races ahead on more cryptocurrency legislation & as the CFTC lets the prediction markets promote illicit & dangerous gambling," he wrote.

Amanda Fischer, financial policy director at Better Markets and a former SEC chief of staff, called the report "bombshell reporting about a systemic culture of crypto and prediction market corruption at CFTC" in her own X thread. 

Fischer also argued the findings should reshape the debate over the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill that would hand the CFTC sweeping new authority over spot digital commodity markets. "Democrats must examine the CLARITY Act given this new information," Fischer wrote. "CFTC has been corrupted and nothing can be delegated to the agency (absent huge improvements) given the collusion with crypto & prediction markets this article alleges."

The Senate Banking Committee voted 15-9 to advance the CLARITY Act earlier this month, with two Democrats joining Republicans. The House passed its version last July.