Trump's Justice Department disbands its crypto crime unit

On April 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo titled "Ending Regulation by Prosecution" that ended Biden-era Justice Department investigations into cryptocurrency companies, dealers and exchanges and disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. The memo said the department would pursue only terrorists, drug traffickers and others who use crypto to commit crimes, not the platforms they use, and would assist President Trump's crypto working group. Blanche called the prior approach "a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution." The team had won a conviction in a $110 million crypto fraud, a guilty plea from a man who moved more than $700 million through a drug-market platform, and helped on the Binance investigation. When he signed the memo, Blanche held cryptocurrency investments valued at $159,000 to $485,000, including bitcoin worth $100,000 to $250,000, Solana, Ethereum and Coinbase stock, according to his financial disclosures as reported by ProPublica. His ethics agreement required him to divest those assets within 90 days of his March 5 confirmation and not to take part in any matter with a direct and predictable effect on them until they were sold. In late May and early June 2025, he gave his bitcoin, Solana, Cardano and Ethereum, valued at $116,000 to $315,000, to his adult children and a grandchild, and sold other crypto-related assets. The conflict-of-interest statute covers a spouse and minor children but not adult children or grandchildren. Ethics experts told ProPublica the memo violated the conflict law and his ethics agreement and that he should have recused himself. The Campaign Legal Center estimated his bitcoin rose 34 percent between the memo and his divestment and asked the Justice Department's inspector general and the Office of Government Ethics to investigate. In January 2026, six Democratic senators wrote that he had "a glaring conflict of interest and should have recused" himself. A Justice Department spokesperson said Blanche's crypto orders were "appropriately flagged, addressed and cleared in advance," without saying who cleared them.