Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee Maxine Waters (D-CA) and several of her fellow Democratic House members walked out of a joint hearing Tuesday morning in protest of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ties to crypto.
Waters Boycotts Crypto Hearing
Titled “American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets: A Blueprint for the 21st Century,” the hearing was co-held with the House Agriculture Committee just one day after House Republicans unveiled a discussion draft of a landmark crypto regulation bill.
Featuring witnesses including Coinbase Product VP Greg Tusar, former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Benham, and Hiro Systems CEO Alex Miller, the hearing was expected to largely cover crypto market structure.
“I object to this joint hearing because of the corruption of the President of the United States and his ownership of crypto and his oversight of all the agencies,” Waters said.
The hearing was able to continue as a roundtable, though Democrats on the committee reportedly held their counter-roundtable solely focused on Trump’s crypto ventures.
House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill pushed back against Waters’ objection during the hearing, calling the move an act of “partisanship” in what had otherwise been a “historically strong, good working bipartisan relationship.”
In a press release announcing House Republicans’ Digital Asset Market Structure bill on Monday, Hill praised the collaboration between Democrats and Republicans in developing U.S. crypto regulation.
“We made historic progress in the 118th Congress to build bipartisan, bicameral consensus in crafting a functional regulatory framework for digital assets,” Hill said in a May 5 statement.
Trump’s Crypto Ties Face Scrutiny
However, Congress appears to be encountering political gridlock over the crypto sector, in part due to Trump’s affiliation with the digital asset industry.
Democratic opponents of Trump have increased their scrutiny of the sitting U.S. president over his upcoming gala dinner for the top investors of his meme coin, $TRUMP, in Washington, D.C., later this month.
Critics argue that sales of the cryptocurrency could allow foreign governments to potentially buy favor with Trump and create other ethical concerns.
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