A Trump White House official is now directly negotiating an ethics compromise on the CLARITY Act with Senate Democrats, the last major sticking point standing between the crypto market structure bill and a Senate floor vote.
The development was reported by journalist Pete Rizzo on Tuesday, citing Politico, as the bipartisan group works to resolve a dispute over how the bill would restrict senior government officials, including President Donald Trump, from holding crypto interests. The talks have run through the White House Crypto Council, whose executive director Patrick Witt has been part of the three-party negotiations alongside Senate Republicans and Democrats.
The Ethics Gate
The ethics provision is the toughest of the remaining negotiations on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Senate Democrats including Ruben Gallego and Kirsten Gillibrand have conducted close talks with Republican counterparts and the White House over language limiting officials’ crypto ties, as CoinDesk reported on Tuesday.
The dispute centers on Trump’s own holdings. The president and his family have generated an estimated $2.3 billion from crypto ventures since he returned to office, according to Reuters as cited by Crypto in America. Those interests span a stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto ties of Truth Social, and his namesake memecoin, which complicates any clean path to compliance if the restrictions were to reach the president.
Witt has previously said his office wanted the limits to cover a wide swath of government officials rather than target the president directly, a framing Democrats have resisted.
A Walked-Back Deal
Earlier talks had produced a tentative agreement before the Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill in May, but key pieces were later pulled back. A provision that would have let state attorneys general sue the Department of Justice over a failure to enforce the ethics rules was dropped by Republicans and the White House, Crypto in America reported on June 10.
Republicans countered by offering to limit enforcement authority to the Attorney General and floated impeachment as an alternative remedy, but Democrats rejected the offers as a reversal of the earlier deal. Senators Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks have signaled their support hinges on strong ethics guardrails addressing Trump’s crypto business.
The fresh round of White House negotiations marks a return to the table after that impasse, with the administration now directly engaged on a compromise rather than walking away.
Lummis Sees Progress
Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the Republican negotiators, said the US is finally close to getting digital asset legislation right, casting the moment as the most promising yet for the bill she has championed. She has kept up a steady stream of posts urging her colleagues to move.
“Software developers should not need an army of lawyers to know if their code is legal,” Lummis wrote on X over the weekend. “The Clarity Act ends that absurdity.”
The Senate Banking Committee advanced an amended version of the bill in a bipartisan vote in May, after the House passed its own version by a wide bipartisan margin in July 2025. The Senate placed the measure on its legislative calendar on June 1, making it eligible for full floor consideration.
The Floor Math
Ethics is one of two top hurdles, alongside law enforcement concerns over the bill’s developer-liability shield. Crypto lobbyists are pushing for a July floor vote, leaving a narrow window before the Senate’s August recess that many view as the unofficial deadline.
The Defiant has tracked the bill’s path through the chamber, where seven Democratic votes have become the gate to clearing a 60-vote threshold. Lummis has also been pressing for a floor vote before the recess as the House lines up a July field hearing.
Analysts have warned that the Senate likely needs to pass the bill before August for it to become law this year, with the odds narrowing sharply if lawmakers miss that deadline ahead of the midterm elections.
