Trump's family creating problems for GOP as clock ticks down on president's promised bill

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to get a landmark crypto bill passed through Congress, which currently has a Republican Party majority in both chambers, is running into a roadblock.

His own family.

According to Politico's Jasper Goodman and Declan Harty, Don Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have built crypto businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars, prompting Democrats to demand strict ethics provisions before allowing any regulatory overhaul to move forward.

"There is no final bill — there is no final movement — unless there is a bipartisan agreement when it comes to the ethics provision," said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a supporter of crypto legislation who has been involved in negotiations.

The Trump family's crypto holdings have become a massive leverage point for Democrats, the report notes, pointing to the Trump family's crypto businesses, which account for more than $1 billion of their wealth, which has become a talking point for balking lawmakers who are warning about Republican-led efforts to put in place laws that will allow the Trump family to continue to cash in with few restrictions.

The White House has denied any conflicts of interest, and Senate Republicans have largely defended the president's family businesses, but face the reality that their party is poised to lose one or both chambers of Congress, making a Trump-friendly bill unlikely after November.

Even some Republicans are drawing a line.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a retiring senior Senate Banking Committee member, warned: "There has to be ethics language in the bill before it leaves the Senate, or I'll go from one of the people working on negotiating it to voting against it."

According to the report, the Trump family's crypto empire benefited enormously from Trump's regulatory approach as the family has emerged as major crypto players. The proposed bill, as it stands now, would accelerate this expansion by splitting regulatory oversight between Wall Street regulators — opening the door for mainstream finance and institutional investors long reluctant to enter the crypto market.