Sen. Elizabeth Warren has urged the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to halt its review of a bank charter tied to a crypto firm with direct financial links to President Donald Trump, arguing the situation poses an unprecedented conflict of interest for federal banking regulators. In a Jan. 13 letter to OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould, Warren asked the agency to pause consideration of the national bank charter application filed by WLTC Holdings LLC, an entity affiliated with World Liberty Financial (WLFI). According to Warren, WLFI was co-founded by Trump and includes financial involvement from members of his family. Approving the charter while those ties remain, she warned, would put the OCC in the awkward position of regulating and shaping the profitability of a business directly connected to the sitting president. Warren framed the concern as more than ordinary ethics questions. She noted that the OCC head is a presidential appointee who serves at the president’s discretion, meaning the agency could be perceived as supervising a company in which the president has a financial stake—an arrangement she said risks undermining confidence in both the regulator and the broader banking system. The charter under review would allow WLFI’s trust bank to operate under a federal framework and potentially carry out activities such as issuing and custodying a $1 stablecoin. Warren argued that granting those regulatory advantages while Congress has yet to settle core crypto market-structure questions would be inappropriate. She also said current legislative drafts, including the recently passed GENIUS Act, do not adequately address conflicts arising from presidential involvement in digital-asset firms. Warren requested that the OCC pause its review until Trump fully divests from WLFI and all related financial conflicts are eliminated, and she asked for a written commitment from the Comptroller by Jan. 20 before any further action on the application proceeds. The OCC has not publicly responded. The agency has conditionally approved other crypto-linked banking entities recently, but Warren cautioned that moving ahead with WLFI’s application under the present circumstances could erode trust in federal oversight. As lawmakers continue hashing out how U.S. banking law should treat crypto firms, the WLFI charter dispute is likely to surface again during upcoming committee markups—raising fresh questions about regulatory independence, presidential conflicts, and the political dimensions of crypto policy. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news