US senator probes Tether after reported deal with ex-Trump crypto adviser

Update (Oct. 23, 6:27 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from Tether.

Senator Richard Blumenthal has requested information from Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino after a Wall Street Journal report said that the stablecoin issuer had inked a $6.3 million deal with a marketing company co-founded by former White House crypto adviser Bo Hines.

In a Thursday letter to Ardoino, the Connecticut lawmaker said that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations demanded “records and information related to contracts, payments, communications, and lobbying” between Tether and Nxum, Hines’ company. The probe into Nxum, Tether and Hines, according to Blumental, was part of what the senator called the Trump administration’s “self-enrichment and self-dealings with cryptocurrency firms.”

“While Hines failed to divest his one-third stake in Nxum [...] he worked closely over encrypted messaging applications with Nxum to coordinate lobbying, advocacy, and browbeating of members of Congress that were opposed to, or had sought changes to, pending stablecoin legislation,” said Blumenthal. “Those messages also reportedly demonstrate that Tether was directly coordinating Nxum’s lobbying efforts on the GENIUS Act which would regulate stablecoins, with CEO Paolo Ardoino demanding that Nxum ‘obliterate’ the legislation’s opponents.”