★ Private Action
Roger Ver hires Trump-tied Kise to lobby DOJ on tax prosecution
Easing Up on CryptoHis Lawyers, Now at Justice
Filed January 2025
★ The Brief
What happened
Roger Ver, a crypto billionaire indicted over roughly $50 million in tax evasion, added Christopher Kise to his defense team. A former personal attorney to Trump, Kise used ties to DOJ appointees Todd Blanche and Ketan Bhirud to secure meetings that cut out the case's career prosecutors.
Who enabled it
Who benefits
Deal or steal?
Kise lobbied through 2025; that October the DOJ dropped the criminal case, letting Ver settle for $49.9 million with no guilty plea. Ver had separately paid Trump ally Roger Stone $600,000 to lobby Congress to repeal the tax law he was charged under.
★ Cast your vote
Roger Ver, a cryptocurrency billionaire indicted for approximately $50 million in tax evasion and fighting extradition from Spain, added Christopher Kise to his defense team. Kise, a former personal attorney to Donald Trump and close colleague of Trump DOJ appointees Todd Blanche and Ketan Bhirud, leveraged his relationships to secure meetings with Bhirud that excluded the career prosecutors most familiar with the case. Over the course of 2025, Kise lobbied Blanche and Bhirud to abandon the criminal prosecution, wearing down their zeal for pursuing Ver on criminal charges over the course of several months.
Further reading
- ★ Government ActionOctober 2025Trump DOJ drops Roger Ver tax case for $49.9M, no guilty plea
- ★ Private ActionDecember 2024Roger Ver pays Stone $600K to lobby against law in his prosecution
- ★ Private ActionJune 2026Trump banked $2.2 billion in year one, mostly from crypto he regulates
- ★ Government ActionMay 2026Trump's DOJ forever-bars IRS claims against Trump and family
- ★ Government ActionMay 2026Trump's DOJ drops bribery case against billionaire Gautam Adani
- ★ Government ActionJanuary 2026Trump's two top market regulators launch joint 'Project Crypto'