At a glance
- Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) Minority, sent an 8 Oct letter to Cantor Fitzgerald chairman Brandon Lutnick seeking documents and answers about the firm’s relationship with Tether.
- Responses and document preservation are requested by 23 Oct 2026. The claims in the letter are Blumenthal’s and the PSI Minority’s; they are not findings by a court or a unanimous committee.
Blumenthal’s press release frames the request as part of an inquiry into illicit use of cryptocurrencies and into self-enrichment allegations involving cryptocurrency firms and the Trump Administration. Cantor Fitzgerald and Tether had not published a public reply by the time of writing.
What the letter asks
The PDF lists 13 numbered requests. They cover when Cantor first partnered with Tether, annual revenue from the relationship, whether Cantor requires independent audits of Tether’s assets, how Cantor monitors OFAC and anti-money-laundering compliance, custodial holdings for Tether, ownership records, and communications with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and with members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets.
The letter defines “Tether” to include named affiliates and sets the default time window as 1 Jan 2023 to the present.
Figures the letter cites — attributed
Blumenthal’s text repeats figures that are his citations, not independent CryptoWatchDesk tallies:
- He writes that President Trump has made “over $2 billion” since returning to office, citing a New York Times report dated 30 Jun 2026.
- He writes that Howard Lutnick has made “over $250 million” in that period, including a “$192 million distribution” from Cantor Fitzgerald, citing CNBC (30 Sep 2026).
- He writes that Cantor Fitzgerald’s “five percent stake in Tether” rose from “$600 million to an estimated $10 billion” since the President’s return, plus “tens of millions of dollars” a year from assets held for Tether, citing the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (7 Aug 2026) and a prior Wall Street Journal report.
Those dollar amounts should be read as claims in the letter, sourced to the outlets Blumenthal footnotes — not as verified balance-sheet facts in this brief.
The September PSI report he relies on
On 28 Sep 2026 the PSI Minority released a report titled “Tethered to Terrorism: Crypto & Iran’s Shadow Banking Network.” Blumenthal’s letter says the report concluded that Tether’s dollar-pegged USDT has become a tool inside Iran’s shadow banking network and that Tether had failed to freeze or destroy funds in wallets linked to illicit actors. Those are Minority report conclusions. They are contested terrain in the industry and are presented here as the basis for the document demand, not as adjudicated fact.
Related: What a dollar stablecoin is
The letter also argues that, while Tether says it operates from El Salvador, “the vast majority of its assets reside in the United States” under Cantor’s custodianship — again, Blumenthal’s framing.
What happens next
Cantor Fitzgerald has until 23 Oct 2026 to respond and to preserve related records. The next public markers are whatever reply Cantor files, any Tether statement, and whether the Minority publishes further exhibits. Separately, European supervisors are tightening non-MiCA stablecoin expectations for licensed firms — a different legal track, but the same asset class. ESMA’s non-MiCA stablecoin opinion
Related: [ESMA’s non-MiCA stablecoin opinion -> esma-non-mica-stablecoins-casps-cease-services]] [link: Conduit’s lawsuit over a USDT freeze
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.