New CLARITY Ethics Proposal Fails to Require Full Divestiture and Still Relies on Trump’s Own Appointees to Police Him

A joint statement by leading ethics and anticorruption organizations

September 14, 2026

Late last night, barely 40 hours before Tuesday’s vote on the CLARITY Act, Senate Republicans released new ethics language. The text attempts to address presidential crypto conflicts, but it falls far short. Disclosure, recusal, and blind trusts cannot eliminate these conflicts—only full divestiture can. And any ethics rule is meaningful only if it covers the right people, takes effect promptly, and can actually be enforced.

On each of those measures, this proposal fails.

The biggest problem is enforcement. If President Trump broke the rules, it would primarily be up to his own Justice Department to hold him accountable. State attorneys general could not take the President to court themselves, and the Trump-appointed head of the Office of Government Ethics could single-handedly block their limited path for forcing the Justice Department to act by declaring that the President’s conduct was allowed.

The protections also could take nearly another year to take effect, allowing President Trump to continue profiting from the crypto businesses the proposal is supposed to address in the meantime. And the rules would not cover his adult children, leaving them free to profit from crypto ventures while their father is president.

Taken together, these are not minor defects. They mean the proposal would neither eliminate President Trump’s existing crypto conflicts nor ensure meaningful accountability if its restrictions were violated.

For these reasons, the undersigned organizations remain opposed to the CLARITY Act in its current form, and call on Congress to close these gaps before moving forward.

Signed,

Transparency International U.S.
Public Citizen
Indivisible
Americans for Financial Reform
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Common Cause
Democracy Defenders Action