'What Corruption Looks Like': Trump DOJ Disbands Crypto Enforcement Unit

The Trump administration on Monday delivered another gift to cryptocurrency giants by directing federal prosecutors to curtail their focus on the industry and disbanding a U.S. Justice Department unit tasked with investigating and pursuing cases against criminal actors in the digital asset space.

The decision to dismantle the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which the Biden administration established in 2021, was laid out in a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as President Donald Trump's personal defense attorney.

Fortune first reported the existence of Blanche's memo on Tuesday and noted that other agencies—including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission—have received similar directives from leadership.

The new memo declares that the Justice Department "is not a digital assets regulator" and that the agency, now under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi, will narrow its focus to prosecuting individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing."

CNBCreported that the memo "explicitly states" that the Justice Department "will not pursue enforcement against crypto exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, or offline wallets for the actions of their users or 'unwitting violations of regulations'—marking a major departure from prior policy."

"Prosecutors are instructed not to charge violations of financial laws, such as unlicensed money transmission and unregistered securities offerings unless they can prove the defendant knew of the rules and willfully broke them," the outlet added.

"There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook."

Cryptocurrency giants and industry-allied super PACs pumped tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election—largely on the side of Republicans—and donated to Trump's inaugural committee, spending viewed as an attempt to influence the administration's regulatory posture.

Additionally, Trump and his family have a financial stake in the industry: Reutersnoted Tuesday that on top of the president and first lady's meme coins, "the Trump family has a claim on 75% of net revenues from token sales by World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture."

Blanche's memo comes weeks after Trump's SEC agreed to drop a lawsuit against the crypto exchange giant Coinbase, a move that one watchdog described as a "massive gift" to the cryptocurrency industry.

The Associated Presscharacterized the new memo as "part of a larger move by the Justice Department to step back from certain white-collar enforcement."

A tracker run by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen shows that the Trump administration has "halted, dropped, or withdrawn enforcement actions against more than 100 corporations" so far.

The list includes several cryptocurrency companies, including Crypto.com, which was facing an SEC probe.

"There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook," Axios' Dan Primack wrote last month after Trump pardoned the three co-founders of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX.