On Tuesday, July 14, 2026 at 12:15PM ET, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Indivisible, Americans for Financial Reform, and author and filmmaker Ben McKenzie held a press conference on Capitol Hill to discuss the dangers of the CLARITY Act and its failure to rein in President Donald Trump’s corrupt crypto schemes, as well as the growing political corruption driven by the cryptocurrency industry’s influence in Washington.
Speakers called out how the legislation would benefit the crypto industry while weakening oversight and examined how unprecedented crypto spending in federal elections is buying influence and shaping public policy. They called on lawmakers to reject legislation that prioritizes industry interests over accountability, consumer protections, and the public interest.
The Senate is scheduled to vote on the CLARITY Act the following week, July 20th.
What: Press Conference on the CLARITY Act
When: Tuesday, July 14, 12:15PM ET
Where: Capitol Hill — SD-B48
Who:
- Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
- Ezra Levin, Co-Executive Director, Indivisible
- Ericka Taylor, Co-Executive Director, Americans for Financial Reform
- Ben McKenzie, Author & Filmmaker
- Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon)
- Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland)
Transcript
Ezra Levin, Co-Executive Director, Indivisible
I’m Ezra Levin. I’m one of the co-founders of Indivisible here on behalf of Indivisible Groups in just about every congressional district in the country. And we’re here because the Senate is considering voting on the Clarity Act, a bill written with, for, by the crypto industry. It contains not one single word preventing the president or the president’s family from enriching themselves,with this bill becoming law, that’s what would happen. And you know what?Look, I’m somewhat, I’m well acquainted with grassroots energy, what the people are clamoring for. We see the town halls, we see people in the streets. You know what you don’t see right now? You do not see people in the streets clamoring for another industry-friendly crypto bill. You do not see members of Congress at town halls getting questions about, when are you going to pass the Clarity Act? We need the Clarity Act, because they’re not clamoring for this. That’s not what’s happening in reality. What Americans want, and they tell us this in red states, in blue states, in purple states, in rural areas, in suburban areas. They want a government that isn’t bought. They want a government that actually works for them. That’s what they’re looking for. This bill fails that test. That’s what we know. And look, this isn’t just our first rodeo. We’ve been through this before. Last year with the Genius Act, we saw what happens when Congress passes an industry-friendly bill with no ethics provisions at all. The last crypto bill, the Genius Act, included nothing on that front. And you know what the president did? You know what happened? His own financial disclosure shows that he made more than a billion dollars in crypto over the last year. A billion dollars. That’s not a loophole. That’s a business model. Congress gave Trump a printing press. And what did he do?He asked for a bigger printing press. That’s what he wants. And if you need to know how badly the president wants this bill, just look at what he did yesterday. Senator Lindsey Graham had been gone, not for 48 hours, and he didn’t sit on one of the committees that wrote this bill, but the president of the United States went on Truth Social and said, this is a direct quote, in honor of Senator Lindsey Graham, a big supporter, the US Senate should pass the Clarity Act. Think about that. A man died. And within two days, the president is using his death as a whip for urgency on this bill because every single day this bill doesn’t get passed is a day Trump isn’t making his next billion dollars. So this should be very, very simple for Congress right now. There should be no crypto legislation without real ethics safeguards for the president, for his family, for public officials. And any senator who votes for this bill without those kinds of ethics provisions,is voting for the president to further self-enrich himself, voting to make that the law of the land. And we are joined by a lot of great leaders who have been fighting this fight. And I want to introduce somebody who is no stranger to the fight for ethics in Congress, Senator Murphy from Connecticut.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
Grateful to be here with so many of my colleagues. Listen, I get it that it is really hard to get your head wrapped around the scope of Donald Trump’s corruption empire in his second term. He spends most of every day not protecting the nation or trying to make people’s lives better or lowering costs for Americans. He spends most of every day coming up with new ways to use the presidency, to use his power over government agencies to make himself rich, to effectively steal from us. Every single one of his corruption schemes matters. The government contracts for the kids, the sale of Trump merchandise in military facilities, the payoffs from the media companies. None of his schemes can be ignored. None of them can be excused. But the biggest scandal, the one that dwarfs all the rest, is Trump’s crypto empire. His issuance of cryptocurrency as a means to make billions of dollars off of both bilking his supporters into buying a worthless token, but also providing a hidden Ave. for mass-scale bribery of the White House is the biggest corruption racket in the history of this country. Thus far, Trump and his family have made $2.3 billion off of their crypto schemes. Trump alone made $1.4 billion in 2025. That was the majority of his income. And the scheme is both very complicated, but also very simple. The simple part of it is that CEOs and foreign governments and oligarchs can send huge amounts of money directly to Trump and his family, secretly, through the purchase of his crypto currency and then ask and get favorable government treatment. Some of them don’t even hide this. One big trucking company openly bragged that they were buying millions in Trump’s coin in order to have influence over Trump’s tariff policy. One crypto CEO helped Trump set up the company, Trump’s crypto company, and then asked for a pardon for his money laundering crimes, money laundering for child sex predators and terrorists, and he got the pardon. This is just one big giant bribery operation, which brings us to the subject of today’s event. The Clarity Act, the legislation backed by the crypto industry to create a set of comprehensive rules for the industry, allowing it to more deeply penetrate our banking system and our broader economy, is speeding its way to the Senate. And we’re here to simply say this. There is no reason to pass a new regulatory system for crypto if this system does not stop Trump’s corruption of the entire industry. This bill is worthless if it protects Trump’s dominance over an industry that he will have more control to regulate. In fact, the bill is in and of itself a fundamental corruption. If it gives Trump’s corruption the protection of law. Unbelievably, the bill that emerged from the Senate Banking Committee had no ethics title. Senator Van Hollen and others fought very hard to add that title. No protection against Trump’s corruption. There are reports that an ethics title may be added to the bill before it reaches the Senate. But unlessThat section totally ends the Trump family’s crypto corruption scheme. It is worthless and it condemns the bill. Every senator who says that they care about clean government should draw this line. At the very least, every Senate Democrat should draw this line. And I am very proud to be here today with several of my colleagues in the Senate who agree on our caucus, our colleagues on both sides of the aisle deciding to draw this line. So let me introduce Senator Merkley and then Senator Van Hollen.
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon)
Thank you so much, Chris, and thank you to Americans for financial reform and to Ezra and Indivisible for being so fierce in drawing attention to what we’re facing now. It turns out that President Trump is a lot better at creating swamps than he is about draining them. And his swamp of corruption, it’s now a mile deep and a mile wide. And that swamp, the biggest contributor to it, it’s crypto. Sure, he’s doing lots of other corrupt things like buying into stock right before a company gets a big government contract and so many other aspects, as Chris has mentioned. But in the last year, making over a billion dollars selling his crypto meme coins and his stable coins. And let’s just turn the clock back a little bit to the Genius Act. And a number of us campaigned fiercely, there’s a little bit of deja vu to this moment, and said there absolutely had to be anti-corruption provisions in that act. In fact, on the Senate floor, I pushed for an amendment and the chair, Tim Scott of the Banking Committee, blocked it from even being considered. And that amendment was on the End Crypto Corruption Act that we now have half of our caucuses is signed on to. And others have put forward anti-corruption on crypto, including Chris Murphy, who has his meme act. So we are saying that it’s not enough to draft an amendment or draft an act to stop this corruption. We have to actually stop it. And I’ll tell you, there’s a lot more wrong with this Clarity Act than simply the fact that it lacks corruption measures. But the fact that it lacks corruption measures, I mean, just in the time of a year since Genius Act came forward, here we are watching this. And let’s just think about how this is so much like people passing cash under the table. The president produces a little electronic coin, which costs nothing to produce, and you give him cash when you buy it. It’s just like passing a sack of cash under the table. Or UAE says, we’re going to buy $2 billion in stablecoins or do transactions in Trump’s coins rather than doing them in cash. And what’s the corruption?Well, because Trump gets to put that $2 billion in the bank and keep all the interest off it. That’s $80 million a year. I mean, how many sacks, how many paper sacks does it take to pass Eighty $1,000,000 under the table to the President of the United States of America, so this is… corruption, pure and simple. So at an absolute minimum, we need to incorporate the provisions that are in the MEME Act or in the End Corruption Act that says senior government officials in the executive branch, including the president, vice president, cabinet officials, people at GS 16 and above, and elected members of Congress and our families cannot in any way profit from this crypto business. We’ve had a lot of conversations about the corruption that stems from individual stock trading. This is on an order of magnitude more extensive in terms of the corruption delivering and people serving in public office for profit and basically being they’re not for the people’s benefit, but for their personal portfolio. So let me introduce another member of the team who fought so hard in committee, who has been a stalwart in pursuing good consumer legislation and anti-corruption legislation, my friend Chris Van Hollen.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland)
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. And I want to start with thank yous. Thank all of you who are here to shine a spotlight on this corrupt piece of legislation. that will do a lot of harm to the American people if it ever passes the United States Senate. It is a bit of a bottom crawler. It’s sort of crawling around the bottom, and it could pop up on the Senate floor anytime. So it’s really important that Indivisible’s here. Ezra, thank you, and your team at Indivisible. Ericka, thank you, and the folks at Americans for financial reform, for all you’re doing. Ben McKenzie,Thank you for doing a great movie. Everybody should see this movie in the United States of America because it warns about the dangers of crypto. In fact, the title says it all. What is it? Everybody’s lying to take your money? Everyone is lying to you for money. Everyone’s lying to you for money. That sums up what this crypto scheme is all about. So thank you all for gathering here to shine that important light on what’s happening here. I want to thank my colleagues. I want to thank Senator Murphy. I want to thank Senator Merkley and others who have been really fighting the Trump corruption, because it’s not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue at the end of the day. It’s an issue every American and not for special interests and the President’s pocketbook. And as Senator Merkley indicated,there are lots of reasons to oppose this bill. I mean, if you were going to do a digital assets bill, you would want to protect consumers. You would want to make sure that it didn’t become the major vehicle for criminal networks, for terrorist organizations, for rogue states to engage in illicit transactions. And you would want to deal with the conflict of interest issues that we’re focused on here today. The Clarity Act does none of those things. In fact, it makes all of them worse. And as my colleagues have said, the worst of Trump’s corruption in terms of the magnitude of the profits that he’s reaping has been in the area of crypto. It started out with this very corrupt deal that he did with the members of the royal family of the UAE. And it’s not just that he benefited, but he benefited at our expense. What the Trump administration did was transfer very sensitive technologies to the government of the UAE. These are technologies that we restricted. We did not want them to fall into the hands of the UAE. And essentially, when a member of the royal family of the UAE invested $2 billion into the Trump family crypto business, World Liberty Financial, after that $2 billion, they lifted the restrictions on the transfer of technology, essentially trading our national security for the president’s personal profit. And that netted them over $700 million, the president. And then on top of that, you have the Trump meme coin, the Trump meme coin, where the president himself had a big party and tried to bid up the values of this meme coin. And people came from all over the world. A lot of foreign investors who wanted to rub elbows with the president came. I remember Senator Merkley went to try to, I think, crash the party. But think about this. president of the United States using the power and symbol of the presidency to hold a party, to bring people from all over the world to buy the Trump meme coin. And Trump did very well. with this meme coin. This was another over $600 million. You add those up, you get over a billion dollars, a billion four, just for the president. He did very well, but over a million retail investors, including a lot of Trump supporters, got completely screwed. They lost over $3 billion, over $3 billion, in fact, $3.8 billion. So the president pockets over 600 million bucks, and over 1 million of our fellow Americans get screwed and lose $3.8 billion. Because he’s like the casino. He wins no matter what. The value goes up, the value goes down. He wins on every transaction. That is the corrupt turnstile that we’ve got going in the Oval Office. So that’s why it’s so important we do something about it. I did offer an amendment back in the day on the Genius Act. to prevent this kind of self-dealing, right? Because the president of the United States, who’s essentially running the show, obviously in the executive branch, who’s developing regulations for crypto, should not be able to engage in this kind of self-dealing for himself and his fence. So the amendment was very simple. It prohibited that. By the way, it also prohibited members of Congress. from engaging in that kind of activity, because after all, as this bill proves, we are in the process right now of writing the law for this. And people who are writing the law should not be able to turn around and be issuers of crypto and pocket a lot of money. So that went down in committee, in the Banking and Housing Committee, on a party line vote. I offered the same amendment again on this Clarity Act. Again, Republicans on the committee voted it down. And I just want to emphasize in closing what Senator Murphy said, and Senator Merkley has made the point, all of you. Democrats should not allow any bill to proceed in any way in the United States Senate without dealing with this obscene corruption. Senator Merkley said there are other things that in my view have to be fixed for this bill to be a bill that’s in the public interest. But clearly we need to address this corruption, which is at the heart of the bill, and the crypto corruption, which is so much at the center of the Trump administration’s corruption. So thank you again for shining a light on this bottom crawler. Let’s hope it never sees the light of day. And with that, let me turn it over to Ericka Taylor, who’s been just terrific on this and other consumer protection issues over at Americans for Financial Reform.
Ericka Taylor, Co-Executive Director, Americans for Financial Reform
Thank you, Senator Van Hollen. Good afternoon, everyone. As the Senator said, I’m Ericka Taylor, a co-executive director at Americans for Financial Reform, formed in the wake of the financial crisis so that we could fight for a financial system that works for everyone. So we’re happy to join the members of Congress, our allies at Indivisible and beyond here today, to share our grave concerns about the Clarity Act. The Clarity Act was created by and for crypto billionaires. Crypto is not operating with nearly the same guardrails as the rest of the financial system. And the crypto industry is working really hard to keep it that way. So if their efforts are successful, we’re not just going to have problems for those folks who are investing in crypto. Everyone, all of us will be exposed to increased fraud, crime, and dangerous instability. And it’s also going to give a green light to crypto corruption. So the president’s family crypto businesses have already, as you’ve heard, racked up billions from their corrupt ventures. This bill does nothing to address that, and in fact, it rewards the grift. It gives crypto billionaires exactly the policy outcomes that they have been trying to buy all these many months. Those policies threaten the retirement security of millions of workers and undermine financial security for people across the country. They embolden scammers to prey on many people, especially older adults. And they create loopholes that make it harder to stop money launderers and traffickers. So this bill is dangerous. And people get that. And AFR, we recently released a poll that found that large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents think crypto has too much power in Washington and are worried that crypto donations will deliver a legislative giveaway to the industry. And a majority of voters think crypto is an unregulated, unstable market that could, should have to play by the same rules as other financial companies and not get special exemptions. So members of Congress must reject a bill that fails to curb the Trump family’s crypto-fueled self-dealing, that fails to protect people’s pocketbooks or broader financial security, and that creates carve-outs and privileges for a corrupt industry. Make no mistake, A vote for this bill is a vote for Trump crypto corruption and a vote for the crypto billionaires demanding that lawmakers do their bidding. The public wants and deserves better. Thank you. And next is Ben McKenzie, actor, author, filmmaker, to teach us about what this is doing to the country and what we can do to stuff.
Ben McKenzie, Author & Filmmaker
Hi, My name is Ben McKenzie. Thank you, Ezra. and indivisible for this incredible event. Thank you all for showing up. Thank you to AFR. I’m an actor, author, and filmmaker. I’ve spent the last four years investigating and documenting fraud and other criminal activity in cryptocurrency. And I’m here today to speak some blunt truths about what’s happening behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, out of view of the American public when it comes to the Clarity Act. Behind closed doors, lobbyists for crypto are looking to collect on the hundreds of millions of dollars that they have dumped into politics in just the last few years. In 2024 alone, crypto spent $240 million trying to intimidate or coerce politicians into subservience. Now they expect politicians who took their money to support legislation favorable to the industry no matter the cost to the public. The majority of that public already does not trust crypto, and it is worried about its influence in Washington. As Ericka mentioned, a recent poll commissioned by AFR found that two-thirds of the American public already think crypto has too much influence in D.C., and only 3% think it has too little. 66 to 3. You don’t see a score like that often. It’s like the first week of college football season. The public’s distrust of crypto is well-founded. If the average American knows anything about crypto, it’s this. The President of the United States of America and his family have made over a billion dollars via cryptocurrency in just his first year in office. The level of corruption in the Trump administration involving crypto boggles the mind. The Clarity Act is meant to provide regulatory clarity for cryptocurrency. and yet it has no ethics provision to prevent or even diminish President Trump’s crypto corruption. I would say that omission provides a lot of clarity when it comes to what the crypto industry actually cares about. They are perfectly fine enabling Trump’s crypto corruption so long as they too become filthy rich in the process. Unfortunately, it appears that the majority of the Republican caucus is also fine with this arrangement. But it is unacceptable for any Democrat to vote for the Clarity Act without an ethics provision. I’m a lifelong Democrat. I grew up in Texas. So I’m used to fighting difficult fights, and quite frankly, sometimes I’m used to not winning. But this is a winnable fight. All we have to do as Democrats is stick together and do the right thing. If A Democratic Party stands for anything, it ought to stand against Trump’s crypto corruption. Clarity cannot pass on the Senate floor without at least seven Democratic votes. For those senators on the fence, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. You cannot say you oppose Trump’s crypto corruption and then vote to enable that same corruption. I’m a father of three. I tell my kids all the time, you are what you do, not what you say. If you vote against clarity, you will be on the bright side of history. If you vote for clarity, you can be damn sure we will not forget your betrayal. Voting against clarity offers every senator an opportunity to go on the record and do the right thing. I hope they take it.