Trump Officially Agrees to Bipartisan Crypto Ethics Clause
According to Politico reporter Jasper Goodman, Trump met with his aides on September 11 (Friday) regarding the wording of the ethics clause in the "Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act" (CLARITY Act). Two days later, on the eve of the Senate's final vote to end debate, the Senate confirmed in the final text that he agreed to the relevant restrictions—this constitutes the specific decision timeline behind the phrase "Trump officially agrees."
Chief negotiator Patrick Witt, who represents the White House in negotiations with Congress, previously stated that Trump had agreed to "a historic ethics clause that restricts federal officials from issuing or endorsing digital assets"; however, before the September 11 meeting, Witt refused to confirm whether the new wording had been submitted to Trump for review and did not rule out the possibility that Trump might refuse to make further concessions, stating that "this is certainly possible."
As of the time of publication, what conclusions Trump specifically reached in that September 11 meeting have not been publicly disclosed—there exists an unverifiable internal decision-making process between "Trump reviews the clause" and "Senate text confirms Trump's agreement"; the final result is that the Senate's published 635-page final draft explicitly states that Trump agrees to require all federally elected officials, judges, and their spouses to divest financial interests related to digital assets or place them in blind trusts.
The two-day suspense surrounding whether the president himself would give the nod is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in this legislative tug-of-war—since the ethics clause of the CLARITY Act directly touches on the cryptocurrency business interests of the president's family (previously disclosed that the Trump family is expected to earn over $1.4 billion from related businesses by 2025), the negotiating team needed to first obtain the president's approval before writing specific clauses into the final text for congressional voting; the existence of this "presidential nod" step is also one of the important bases for criticisms from oversight organizations like Transparency International regarding the "voluntary nature and questionable enforceability of the ethics clause" in the bill.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
This model of "the president giving the final nod" is similar to the behind-the-scenes tug-of-war between the executive branch and congressional factions in other major legislation—real decisions often occur not in public committee debates but in internal meetings like the one on September 11 that are not fully disclosed. This is why the public and media can only piece together the decision-making process through snippets from intermediaries like Witt, rather than receiving direct statements from the president himself.
From the perspective of capital and interest games, Trump's final review power over the clause effectively makes him an "invisible veto point" for whether this legislation can advance—despite both houses of Congress having gone through multiple rounds of bipartisan negotiations, as long as the president does not nod in acceptance of clauses involving his own interests, the ethics clause of the entire bill cannot be finalized. This is also the core reason why the negotiations "were not settled until 48 hours before the vote" and explains why the final text was delayed until Sunday evening for publication.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- Real decisions often happen in rooms where cameras can't capture.
- Whoever's interests are written into the clause holds the final veto power.
- Public voting is just the result; unseen meetings are the process.