Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) called for an investigation Tuesday into reported connections between a United Arab Emirates (UAE) chip agreement and a Trump family stablecoin investment.
In a letter to the acting inspectors general of the State and Commerce Departments and the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, the Democrats pushed for a probe into two top Trump officials, David Sacks and Steve Witkoff.
Sacks serves as the White House artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto czar, while Witkoff is the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
The letter follows a New York Times report last week, detailing the intertwined nature of those involved in negotiations of both the chip and crypto deals.
World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture founded by the Trump and Witkoff families, announced in May that an Emirati firm led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan was using the company’s new stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in Binance.
Several weeks later, the White House agreed to give the UAE access to vast amounts of advanced AI chips, with many headed for Sheikh Tahnoon’s AI firm G42.
Witkoff worked on the chip deal while his family business sought the crypto investment, The Times reported.
Sacks also played a role in chip negotiations, seen as potentially beneficial to his work as a venture capitalist, but received an ethics waiver.
“If public reporting is accurate, it appears that Mr. Sacks and Mr. Witkoff, in exchange for personal benefit, may have aided a foreign power’s effort to acquire U.S. technology that could present serious economic and national security risks,” the senators wrote.
“This conduct compromised national security and may have violated federal ethics laws,” they added.
