Blumenthal gives Binance, Tether and Trump’s crypto firms until 4 January, the day after he is due to get subpoena power

Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat whose office calls him the incoming chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), sent letters on Thursday 5 November to Binance, Tether, World Liberty Financial and Fight Fight Fight LLC, the company behind the TRUMP memecoin. He gave all four until 4 January 2027 to hand over records his inquiries have been asking for, according to his office’s press release, reprinted the same day by the Greenwich Free Press. Crypto outlets picked the story up over the weekend of 8 and 9 November.

The date is the point. The new Congress convenes on 3 January. Democrats won both chambers in the 3 November midterms, and the subcommittee’s gavel is expected to pass to Blumenthal when it does. Until then he is the ranking member, the senior figure of the minority, and his letters are requests. Nobody has to answer them, and no subpoena has been issued.

The release frames the deadline in the senator’s own words: “failure to voluntarily produce the requested records and information by January 4, 2027” would leave the subcommittee to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance. Several outlets, including investinglive, read that as a hint at subpoenas once Blumenthal holds the chair.

What each company is asked for is described here from the press release and from the outlets that have reported on the letters; the itemised requests in each letter have not been published in that coverage. Every accusation in this story is the senator’s or a newspaper’s. No court or regulator has found that any of the four companies broke sanctions or ethics rules over the matters in these letters.

Who got a Blumenthal letter on 5 November, and on which inquiry

The crypto letters belong to two separate investigations, the press release shows. The first, opened in May 2025, looks at the TRUMP coin and World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture behind the WLFI token and the USD1 stablecoin. Blumenthal opened it citing reports that Trump-connected crypto firms “may be enabling the violation of government ethics requirements”. In July 2026 he held a public forum on the family’s crypto business, where, according to FinanceFeeds, investors who said they had lost money on the TRUMP memecoin testified.

For World Liberty and Fight Fight Fight, the requests concern foreign investments, government ethics requirements and financial arrangements, FinanceFeeds reported. The two firms also have an earlier date: they were asked to start producing their outstanding records by 30 November 2026, according to FinanceFeeds, investinglive and Crypto Briefing. The press release itself does not give that date.

The second inquiry covers the illicit use of crypto and the Trump administration’s dealings with crypto firms. That is where Binance and Tether sit. The release points to a September 2026 report from the senator’s staff which argues that Tether’s stablecoin has become a significant financial lifeline in Iran’s shadow banking network.

Crypto was only part of the mailing. The same day, Blumenthal wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about immigration enforcement, to FCC Chair Brendan Carr about alleged abuses of power, and to every publicly known donor to the Trump White House ballroom, tech companies among them, on whether they were seeking favours in return. CNN reported the wider set of letters, according to investinglive.

What is new since the October letter to Tether

Coindaro reported on 23 October that Blumenthal had asked Tether and Nxum, Bo Hines’s former consulting firm, for records on the $6.3 million the Wall Street Journal says Tether paid it. Investinglive also recalls an October letter to Cantor Fitzgerald over its ties to Tether. Those letters came from a senator in the minority, two weeks before an election nobody had yet called.

Three things have changed since. The circle is wider: Binance and the two Trump-linked companies are now in the same batch as Tether. There is a single closing date for all four, 4 January. And the politics behind that date shifted on 3 November, when the vote turned the minority into the incoming majority. A letter that could be ignored in October may cost more to ignore in January.

Binance and the $1.7 billion Iran question from February

Blumenthal’s file on Binance opened on 24 February 2026 with a letter to chief executive Richard Teng. Citing media reports, including the New York Times, it asked about roughly $1.7 billion allegedly transferred from Binance accounts to Iran-linked organisations, among them Yemen’s Houthi movement, CoinDesk reported. The senator also asked about two Hong Kong entities, one registered to a former Binance vendor called Blessed Trust, and about compliance staff who were reportedly dismissed after flagging the flows. Crypto Briefing adds that the questions also cover Russia-linked entities.

Binance pushed back at the time. It told CoinDesk that “there are no Iranian users on the platform” and called the reports about dismissed staff false. In its reply of 6 March, it said that to its knowledge no Binance account had transacted directly with an Iran-based entity, The Block reported, and called the press reports “demonstrably false”. Blumenthal wrote back in April. His office presented that letter as pressing Binance on potential misrepresentations to the subcommittee.

Binance’s line has not changed in public. It disputes that it helped anyone evade sanctions and says its compliance controls have sharply cut its exposure to prohibited activity since early 2024, FinanceFeeds and investinglive reported, citing earlier statements. No Binance comment on the 5 November letter had been reported by Monday morning.

The exchange carries history in Washington. It pleaded guilty in November 2023 and agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with US authorities. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, was pardoned by President Trump in October 2025. A month earlier, Blumenthal had joined Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono in a letter to the Justice Department about Binance’s ties to the Trump family and a reported plan to drop safeguards from the plea agreement. None of the coverage of the new letter says it raises the pardon. The October hack, and how Washington reacted to it, is covered in our report on Trump’s response to the Binance hack.

Tether: an Iran report, Nxum and $550 million of freezes

Tether’s file has two strands. One is the Nxum payments from October. The other is Iran: on 28 September the subcommittee’s minority staff published a report on how USDT turns up in wallets tied to Iranian sanctions and seizure cases.

Tether’s answer has been to point at what it freezes. The company says it helped freeze about $550 million of Iran-linked assets in 2026 and stresses its work with law enforcement. On the Nxum payments, a Tether spokesperson said in October that an earlier review by outside counsel “found no evidence of wrongdoing”. No Tether reply to the 5 November letter had been reported by Monday morning.

The stakes are larger here than for any other recipient, because USDT is the biggest stablecoin, the dollar token traders use to move between exchanges. Investinglive called Tether “the exception worth watching” in the batch and said a subpoena aimed at it would be the clearest reason for markets to reassess.

World Liberty and the TRUMP coin company have not answered

Neither World Liberty Financial nor Fight Fight Fight has responded to the November letters, FinanceFeeds and investinglive reported. When Blumenthal first wrote in May 2025, World Liberty called the request “fundamentally flawed”, CoinDesk reported then, and the company told Protos it had no relationship with Fight Fight Fight.

The senator has also said where he wants to look next. After the elections he told the Associated Press his panel wants to examine Trump’s crypto dealings involving Steve Witkoff, the special envoy who co-founded World Liberty, according to The Token Press, which cites the AP. The same outlet says, citing the AP, that the White House denied wrongdoing and called the planned investigations politically motivated.

For background on the token, the stablecoin, the owners and the lawsuits around them, see our World Liberty Financial project page.

Why 4 January matters: from voluntary letter to possible subpoena

As ranking member, Blumenthal “cannot independently compel compliance” with his requests, FinanceFeeds noted. Since the inquiry opened in May 2025, coverage has pointed out that a subpoena from the minority needs the Republican chair, Senator Ron Johnson, to sign on, and Johnson has not done so in these files. Once Blumenthal holds the gavel he would gain subpoena authority, although compulsion would still follow Senate procedure, FinanceFeeds added.

The House is moving in the same direction. Representative Robert Garcia, expected to chair the House Oversight Committee, warned “lawyer up”, Cointelegraph reported on 5 November in a piece on Democrats’ plans to target the Trump family and tech executives close to the president. Bloomberg Law had written before the midterms that Democrats were eager to probe the president’s crypto ties if they won.

For the crypto industry the side effect may matter more than the letters. Investinglive argues that an agenda built around investigations could push the stalled CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill, further down the calendar. Our piece on Elizabeth Warren’s expected move to the head of Senate Banking sets out why the bill has only the lame-duck weeks before 3 January.

The dates to watch

What the letters change for Binance, USDT and USD1 users

Nothing, for now, in practical terms. The letters ask for documents; they freeze no account and change no rule. Binance, USDT and USD1 work as they did last week. What the requests create is a calendar of moments when the companies’ answers, or silence, may become public.

The market was falling on Monday morning, but nothing ties that to the letters. Bitcoin traded near $73,730 at 08:09 UTC on 9 November, down 2.8% over 24 hours, and the total crypto market value was about $2.45 trillion, 6.7% lower over the same period, according to market data at that time. Investinglive wrote that traders had largely priced in the political shift; it recalled that bitcoin briefly fell below $76,000 as the election results came in on 4 November.

European readers face a separate deadline from the same exchange: Binance has told French and Italian users their accounts close on 31 December. That decision has nothing to do with the Senate letters.

How a Senate investigation works, in short

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is the Senate’s main investigative panel. It can ask for documents, hold hearings and publish staff reports, like the one on Tether and Iran. It cannot fine anyone or bring charges. A subpoena, once issued, is a legal order to produce documents or testify; refusing it can lead to a contempt process run by the Senate itself, and only prosecutors decide on criminal cases. A request letter, which is all the four companies have received, carries no such force.

What is still unknown

The itemised requests in each letter have not been made public in the coverage, nor whether any of them mentions Changpeng Zhao’s pardon or the USD1 stablecoin. No reply from any of the four companies had been reported by 9 November. Whether Blumenthal will issue subpoenas in January, and how fast, is open. The 30 November date comes from trade outlets, not from the press release.

The next marker is 30 November, when World Liberty and Fight Fight Fight are due to start sending records, according to those reports. The one after is 4 January 2027, the first full day of the new Congress.