At Hearing with SEC Chair Atkins, Warren Calls Out Trump Administration for Corruption As It Drops Cases Against Corporate Crooks

At Hearing with SEC Chair Atkins, Warren Calls Out Trump Administration for Corruption As It Drops Cases Against Corporate Crooks

"The SEC's job is to make sure our markets are fair and honest. But nearly a year into running the agency, Chair Atkins is unleashing a Golden Age of Fraud."

Watch opening statement here (YouTube) | Watch Q&A here (Youtube)

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, provided opening remarks at a hearing with President Trump's Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins. Her questioning of Atkins focused on the Trump Administration's move to drop cases against corporate crooks who defrauded investors or violated other securities laws, including notable companies that donated to the Trump inauguration or Trump political causes, or have lucrative business ties to the Trump family.

Below is Ranking Member Warren's opening statement and questions as delivered at the hearing:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Our markets are the envy of the world and they deliver enormous opportunity. I want American businesses to thrive. But markets without rules mean that the wealthy and the powerful take all the gains while small businesses, and workers, and consumers get cheated.

The SEC's job is to make sure our markets are fair and honest. But nearly a year into running the agency, Chair Atkins is unleashing a Golden Age of Fraud. The billionaires will cash in, while millions of American businesses and families will end up paying the price.

As soon as he was confirmed, Chair Atkins set to work letting scammers off the hook and unraveling investor protection rules that keep everyday investors from getting cheated. At every fork in the road, he has turned toward Wall Street over Main Street. Here are just a few examples:

For decades, the SEC has monitored corporations and refused to let them go public if they're scams. Now, thanks to Chair Atkins, that oversight has nearly disappeared

Investors have said over and over that they want more information so they can make better decisions. But Chair Atkins is working to slash current disclosures so that companies can hide just how risky they've become;

Under Chair Atkins, the SEC has also made it easier for companies to prevent investors from going to court when those investors have been cheated. Chair Atkins seems to think that if investors get cheated, they should just suck it up.

The Trump SEC has made it easier for executives to silence shareholders and to ignore suggestions for improving corporate governance; and

Perhaps most dangerous of all, the Trump SEC has gutted oversight and enforcement tools, even proposing to dismantle the database that helps the SEC catch insider trading, market manipulation, and other corporate crime.

And the proof that the SEC has largely quit enforcing the law, right there in the numbers. Over the past year, the SEC collected less in monetary penalties against bad actors than it has in over a decade. And I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that's because corporate CEOs are suddenly behaving better.

For crooked CEOs and companies built on fraud, Trump's SEC is a dream come true. Atkins has taken the SEC cops off the beat and under his watch, the SEC has cut way back on investing companies that break- investigating companies that break the law and hurt investors.

Who benefits from the Trump Administration's sidelining the cops at the SEC? President Trump and his billionaire buddies. Rich CEOs like Trevor Milton and companies like Kraken, Coinbase, and Gemini donated big time to Trump - and then the SEC cases against them suddenly disappeared.

While the SEC spends its time handing out special favors, risk is building up in our financial system. And we have seen this movie before.

In fact, the SEC chair who sits here today played a starring role in an earlier financial crash. In the years leading up to the 2008 crash, Chair Atkins, who was then a commissioner on the SEC, along with other regulators, let companies flood the market with complex, risky financial products. Taxpayers ended up bailing out Wall Street while millions of people on Main Street lost their jobs, their homes and their pensions.

Twenty years after the crash, the lesson for Republicans seems to be that so long as you take care of the big boys, Donald Trump and his friends are happy and no further investigation is needed. Once again, American families are being put at risk of losing their shirts because Trump's SEC refuses to do its job and enforce our laws.

Below is a transcript of Ranking Member Warren's exchange with Atkins:

Warren: The SEC is supposed to be the cop on the beat, enforce our securities laws but, Chair Atkins, you've been rolling back investor protections just at a record clip. Meanwhile, there are just as many corporate crooks as ever - who knows maybe more. Those crooks are cooking the books, defrauding investors, and engaging in insider trading, but under your watch, the SEC doesn't seem interested in enforcing our laws against corporate crime.

I'm looking at the data here. Over the past year, the SEC has brought fewer new enforcement actions than at any point in the last decade. Do I have that right?

Atkins: I'm not sure what data you're looking at cause we actually haven't released our data yet. But I would disagree with your premise.

Warren: I'm looking at public data, securities offerings for example, down 10.64% in 2025 to 2024. Investment advisers enforcements down 23.71%. Issuing, reporting, auditing, and accounting down 32.65%. Broker dealer down 29.51%. You have any reason to believe those data are wrong? These all come from publicly reported data.

Atkins: Again, I'm not sure what you're looking at, but we will release our numbers.

Warren: Well I'll tell you what. Let's look at individual cases then, The SEC has dropped one case after another, even for convicted fraudsters who broke the law.

There's Devon Archer, the guy who sold $60 million dollars in worthless bonds to pension holders-you turned him loose. And Carlos Watson, who raked in tens of millions of dollars by lying to investors about his company's financial performance-you turned him loose. And Trevor Milton, who drew in hundreds of millions of dollars by defrauding investors in his company-you turned him loose after he donated $1.8 million dollars to a Trump campaign fund. Three different ways to cheat investors, but there's one thing that all three have in common:

Mr. Atkins, did each of these corporate executives who defrauded American investors first get clemency from President Trump, and then, as the cherry on top of the whipped cream, got all SEC charges and investigations against them dropped?

Atkins: Each one of those cases had particular aspects to them.

Warren: I'm sure they had particular aspects, but the part I raised is did they all get clemency from President Trump and then the SEC backed off and stopped all of its independent investigations and charges. Is that accurate?

Atkins: Well there is always the issue if the President has pardoned someone or give them clemency, then it become very difficult to push for a case -

Warren: You still have civil actions against them, could have -

Atkins: We do but it becomes very difficult.

Warren: But you dropped them all, is that right? I just want to make sure.

Atkins: We withdrew.

Warren: Yes you withdrew, these fraudsters stole millions of dollars from their investors. They were convicted of crimes. But after Trump granted them clemency, the SEC fell in line and dropped its pending cases against them too.

It's part of a broader pattern. Just look at the crypto companies that donated a whopping $85 million dollars to President Trump's inauguration. They may have scammed investors and consumers. But once Trump was sworn in, the SEC started dropping these cases like hot potatoes.

Kraken donated a million dollars. Case dismissed. Coinbase: a million dollars. Case dismissed. Gemini: donates a million dollars. Case dismissed. Binance and a UAE company gave the Trump family stablecoin a huge boost in a $2 billion dollar deal. Case against Binance, dismissed.

As a recent independent investigation found, and I want to quote it, "The SEC no longer actively pursues any cases against firms with known Trump ties. . . . The agency backtracked in investigating every firm that has relationships with the Trump family's crypto businesses or has donated to Mr. Trump's political causes."

Chair Atkins, help me out here. Prove the outside investigators wrong. List the cases the SEC is still actively pursuing against crypto companies that have made big donations to Donald Trump or Trump businesses.

Atkins: Your premise again I think is wrong, I'm not sure what

Warren: Just name the cases that you are actively pursuing against people, or against these giant crypto companies that have made huge contributions to Donald Trump. Are there any? Can you name one?

Atkins: I don't know.

Warren: I'll take one.

Atkins: I can't say. Off hand I can't say which ones have- cases.

Warren: One? Just one?

Atkins: The ones that we have dropped were on registration issues. That's because the prior commission- I disagree with your premise.

Warren: I just have to say here, when these swindlers crash our economy and pull down retirees' pension funds, it's going to be hardworking Americans who pay the price. Billionaires over families: that's the Trump's economy.

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