World Liberty Financial — a crypto firm closely linked to U.S. President Donald Trump and his family — is under renewed scrutiny after two Democratic senators urged federal regulators to investigate its alleged connections to sanctioned actors in North Korea and Russia.
In a letter to Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed warned that the firm’s token sales may have exposed U.S. national security to potential threats. According to CNBC, the senators cited evidence suggesting that WLFI governance tokens were purchased by blockchain addresses tied to foreign entities.
Their concerns follow a September report from watchdog group Accountable.US, which claimed World Liberty Financial sold tokens to traders with on-chain links to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, a sanctioned Russian sanctions-evasion tool, an Iranian crypto exchange, and Tornado Cash.
Warren and Reed argued that such sales effectively “gave adversaries a seat at the table” by providing governance rights in the protocol. World Liberty Financial rejected the allegations, telling CNBC it conducts “rigorous AML/KYC checks” on all presale participants and has previously declined millions of dollars from buyers who failed compliance screening.
Trump Family Controls 75% of WLFI Token Revenue
WLFI’s ownership structure has intensified political scrutiny. According to the company’s website, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump all serve as co-founders, with Donald Trump listed as “Co-Founder Emeritus.” A Trump-affiliated entity, DT Marks DEFI LLC, holds roughly 22.5 billion WLFI tokens—worth more than $3 billion—and is entitled to 75% of the revenue from token sales.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed argue this creates a direct financial conflict of interest for administration officials, noting that three-quarters of all token-sale proceeds “flow directly to President Trump and his family.”
They further warned that WLFI’s rapid expansion—including plans for a debit card and tokenized commodities—combined with what they described as weak compliance controls, “risks supercharging illicit finance activity.”
World Liberty Financial has already faced mounting political and regulatory pressure. Its USD1 stablecoin was used in a $2 billion investment into Binance by UAE-backed fund MGX, shortly before the UAE secured a major semiconductor agreement from Washington.
Expert Says Some Allegations Are Based on False Positives
A new analysis by blockchain researcher Nick Bax has cast doubt on claims that a North Korea–linked wallet invested in WLFI. Bax reviewed the transactions highlighted in the watchdog report and concluded they were false positives rather than genuine interactions with sanctioned entities.
According to Bax, the supposedly “Lazarus-linked” transactions originated from a joke memecoin contract called Dream Cash, which automatically sends tokens from an address labeled as Lazarus Group to anyone who claims them. Bax confirmed that an independent user, @shryder1337, claimed the tokens as a joke—not as part of any transaction involving North Korea.
“The worst part of this all (other than my Senator disseminating disinfo), is Shryder wasn’t just falsely accused of being a DPRK hacker; it appears his big bag of WLFI tokens (~$95k) got frozen as a result of this false positive,” Bax wrote.
