Trump Issues Ethics Waiver For His AI/Crypto Czar

White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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The Trump administration has issued a blanket ethics waiver to venture capitalist David Sacks, now the president’s special adviser for artificial intelligence and crypto, clearing him to work on regulatory issues directly related to his financial holdings, according to a White House memorandum reviewed by The Lever. 

The waiver comes a month after President Donald Trump fired the Senate-confirmed director of the Office of Government Ethics — the independent agency responsible for enforcing federal ethics laws.

“I am granting you a waiver… of any conflict of interest regarding particular matters of general applicability concerning the digital asset industry,” reads the March 5 memo to Sacks from White House counsel David Warrington. 

A crypto industry multimillionaire, Sacks has previously denied any current conflicts of interest in his new governmental role. But the new memorandum states that Sacks’s own disclosure materials note he retains financial interests in venture capital funds that “may presently have some minor digital asset industry holdings or might in the future.” 

Sacks’ direct venture capital interests are in Craft Ventures, Beldore Capitol LLC, and AL Ventures. Craft Ventures, which Sacks cofounded, still also has a sizable stake in numerous digital asset companies such as Lightning Labs and BitGo — the latter of which represents 2.4 percent of the fund’s portfolio, according to the disclosure listed in the memorandum. Overall, crypto investments make up 3.7 percent of Craft’s total assets. 

The memorandum’s assessment does not dispute this conflict but concludes they’re “a small fraction of your and Craft Venture’s holdings.”

Sacks’ new job also oversees policy governing artificial intelligence technology being adopted across myriad industries. He remains listed as a “cofounder and partner at Craft” on the firm’s website, and Craft lists portfolio companies focusing on artificial intelligence. 

But the Trump administration nonetheless issued the waiver, arguing that “it is difficult or impossible to predict how regulation and legislation impacting the private company interests (you own) will affect these larger nondigital interests, such as traditional non-blockchain technology companies or finance entities, not to mention manufacturing or energy entities.” 

This disclosure sheds light on Sacks’ financial stakes across the very industries he’s now overseeing. As the memorandum notes, Sacks previously announced that prior to joining the Trump administration, his venture capital fund Craft Ventures sold more than $200 million worth of crypto assets, $85 million of which was directly attributed to him.

This sell-off coincided with crypto prices skyrocketing amid Trump’s inauguration — and it came just before the White House announced an initiative to use taxpayer dollars to launch a “Crypto Strategic Reserve.” Sacks noted he’d already sold off his personal and fund’s ownership of the cryptocurrencies that the White House would purchase for the reserve — Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Cardano, and Solana. 

But experts say the federal government’s backing of this reserve would still likely inflate the overall value of the cryptocurrency market, potentially including the digital assets owned by Craft Ventures and the venture capital funds Sacks is still invested in. 

After Trump unveiled the crypto reserve, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote a letter to Sacks asking about the efficacy of the endeavor and his personal financial interest in its inception. The letter noted that at the time, the White House had not yet publicly cleared Sacks for work on policy areas where he might have a financial stake. 

The waiver memorandum says that if the funds Sacks remains invested in surpass five percent aggregate holdings in the digital asset industry, then he “must consult with a White House ethics official.”

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