By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 26, 2024 ~

The former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, has learned the hard way the cost of loyalty to Donald Trump and his prevarications. Giuliani has lost his New York law license; was disbarred in Washington, D.C.; has been ordered by a court to pay two defamed Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, $148 million in damages after they became the victims of harassment and death threats after he and Trump spread voter fraud claims about them. This month, Giuliani pleaded for donations to his fundraising page, saying he can’t afford to buy food.

Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, was disbarred in New York and served time in prison for Trump-related crimes. And multiple other lawyers have seen their law licenses suspended for getting too close to Trump.

Trump’s past history of separating lawyers from their ability to earn a living from a law license comes to mind as the days roll by without an announcement of Trump’s pick to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The currently sitting SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, wants zero to do with Trump and has announced he will step down the same day that Trump takes office on January 20. There was also the announcement that Dan Gallagher, the Chief Legal Officer at online trading platform, Robinhood, doesn’t want the job.

Adding to the intrigue, the Wall Street Journal has been strangely quiet on potential nominees that Trump is considering for the post.

A big problem for Trump in finding someone with a law license willing to serve as SEC Chair is that Trump has yet to file the required paperwork indicating how he plans to deal with his conflicts of interests.

Trump is the majority owner of Trump Media, a social media platform that trades on the Nasdaq under a stock symbol representing Trump’s initials – DJT. A publicly-traded stock falls under the supervision of the SEC and the price pattern of DJT suggests bouts of price manipulation.

In addition to that flaming conflict, CNBC reported in September that Trump and his family were launching a crypto firm called World Liberty Financial, writing as follows:

“A copy of an early internal report, known as a white paper and obtained by CoinDesk, listed Barron [Trump] as ‘Chief DeFi Visionary,’ Eric and Donald Jr. as ‘Web3 Ambassadors,’ and Trump Sr. as ‘Chief Crypto Advocate.’

“But while the Trumps will receive compensation from the project, the platform itself is ‘not owned, managed, operated or sold’ by members of the Trump family.

“[Steve] Witkoff, a real estate investor, and Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, are the two people calling the shots at World Liberty Financial, according to a person familiar with the project. Both are new to the crypto industry.”

Much of the crypto world comes under the supervision of the SEC.

For more background on what’s behind Trump’s recent embrace of crypto, see our report: Donald Trump Gives a Speech on Not Letting China Win the Crypto Race – Not Realizing China Banned Crypto Mining and Transactions Four Years Ago.

It will be fascinating to see who is willing to put their law license on the line to serve as Trump’s SEC Chair.