Members of former President Donald Trump's inner circle warn the Wall Street CEO leading his transition team could be readying the White House to become his personal ATM, according to a new report
Trump loyalists told Politico Wednesday they're afraid Howard Lutnick is letting his business interests bleed into official duties by inserting loyalists into the second administration he's planning for the former president.
“Totally sketchy,” a senior Republican official told Politico. “The onus is on him not to use the power in an abusive manner, and that has not been the case.”
Lutnick's team responded to the comments with accusations of their own, arguing he's the victim of a smear campaign mounted by ex-Trump officials linked to Project 2025 and has maintained a strict "firewall" between business and politics.
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But one senior ally raised concerns that Lutnick, 63, has been using his transition co-chair position to take meetings on Capitol Hill to talk about the future of his investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
"While the precise focus of Lutnick’s Washington conversations remains unclear," Politico reported, "his lobbying highlights the range of business entanglements that loom over his role leading the Trump transition — and a potential job in a second administration."
Cantor Fitzgerald has ties to Tether, a crypto company linked to global finance scandals, and D.C. lobbyist Jeff Miller, currently pushing a cryptocurrency bill and raising concerns among Trump insiders about transition-related business, Politico reported.
Experts argued Lutnick's actions could cross the line.
“To have a guy who is in the crypto industry picking financial regulators, I think, is an invitation for trouble,” said Richard W. Painter, ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush.
“It looks and smells bad," Aaron Scherb, senior director of the government watchdog group Common Cause, told Politico. "Even if it’s not outright illegal."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's chief ethics counsel Virginia Canter argued Lutnick could serve as a harbinger of a problematic administration should Trump win.
“If the head of the transition doesn’t have a handle on these issues,” she said, "I think it forebodes what is to come."