Senate's New CLARITY Act Leaves Trump’s Core Crypto Conflicts Unchecked
Senate majority released new CLARITY Act text after meeting with President Trump, without adding sufficient conflicts-of-interest protections
A statement from Transparency International U.S.
July 22, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate today released the latest version of the CLARITY Act, following President Trump’s meeting last Thursday with Republican senators to discuss the legislation and ahead of a possible floor vote as early as next week. The revised bill still fails to adequately address conflicts of interest stemming from President Trump’s existing financial stakes in the cryptocurrency industry.
While the bill restricts officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets for consideration, it does not clearly stop the main ways President Trump has accumulated—and could continue to accumulate—crypto wealth. It does not clearly or comprehensively require him to divest from the businesses, revenue-sharing arrangements, licensing rights, or family entities that generated the reported $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures in 2025. Instead, it provides a divestment-or-blind-trust safe harbor for certain direct interests—including personally held digital assets and potentially some qualifying business interests—while leaving substantial business, revenue, and family arrangements outside any clear requirement to divest or place those interests in a blind trust.
The CLARITY Act has increasingly been seen as a litmus test for senators seeking to hold President Trump accountable for his billion-dollar cryptocurrency conflicts of interest, as well as for those senators seeking to appease and allow those conflicts to continue.
Scott Greytak, Deputy Executive Director of Transparency International U.S. (TI US), issued the following statement:
“Despite months of negotiations, mounting calls for real ethics rules, and the bombshell disclosure that President Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures in 2025, the Senate majority released a bill that does not clearly stop the main ways he made that money—or could keep making it. It leaves significant business, revenue, and family arrangements outside any clear requirement to divest or place those interests in a blind trust, expressly allows preexisting ventures to keep using his name and likeness to mint, sell, and distribute additional digital assets after covered interests are divested or blind-trusted, then lets the ethics provisions expire in January 2029 and erases liability for earlier violations. That’s not clarity—it’s a conflict.”
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