With your support, Campaign for Accountability is working to expose corruption and hold the powerful accountable.
This Week's Updates:
CfA Urges Senators to Examine Crypto Company’s Potential Ties to Terrorist Financing
Yesterday, Campaign for Accountability sent a letter to Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) alerting them to additional facts surrounding crypto firms’ apparent complicity in the financing of terrorism. CfA’s warning follows a letter by the senators—co-signed by a bipartisan group of more than 100 lawmakers—asking US national security officials about reports that, in the months leading up to Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad raised millions of dollars through foreign crypto service Binance, evading U.S. sanctions to fund their operations. CfA advised lawmakers to also turn their attention to the role crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, his blockchain TRON, and the US-based stablecoin issuer Circle may be playing in the financing of terrorist organizations.
In 2021, Circle announced that USDC would be issued on the Asia-based Tron blockchain – two years later, Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing hit Tron with an asset seizure order identifying 26 wallets linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The wallets contained $96 million in three different cryptocurrencies – including Circle’s USDC. In addition to issuing USDC on foreign cryptocurrency networks that do not meet US standards for counterterrorism, Circle also appears to have enabled "chain hopping" by listing its currency on multiple offshore blockchains, a practice that can facilitate money laundering.
CfA highlighted numerous issues with Circle’s operations in 2022, including the fact that its CEO had a history of alleged securities law violations – information which Circle failed to mention in SEC filings. Now it appears that a lack of regulation has enabled Circle to issue its USDC coin, at will and without regulatory review and approval, on foreign cryptocurrency networks such as TRON and more than a dozen other like systems that may not meet US compliance standards for combating illicit finance.
What We Learned From the Un-Redacted Meta Lawsuit
Late Tuesday night, a Massachusetts court released an un-redacted version of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the state’s Attorney General, accusing the company of knowingly harming teens’ mental health and falsely representing its products as safe for young users. The suit was brought in conjunction with 41 other states last month, and adopts the strategy of treating social media platforms as dangerous or defective products. Now fully un-redacted, the Massachusetts complaint paints a picture of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strong resistance to policy changes in the name of user wellbeing, despite repeated requests from senior leaders to invest in this area. One section on recommendation algorithms revealed that Meta’s researchers had identified 52 categories of content that were likely to induce negative appearance comparison (NAC), which can trigger or worsen conditions like eating disorders. According to the company’s own studies, women and teen girls were exposed to the highest proportion of NAC posts, with “1 in 5 pieces of content they see” being related to a sensitive topic. Instead of adjusting algorithms to address this problem, or deprioritizing suggested content, Meta decided to retain the use of these features and continue exposing users to posts that prompted appearance comparison.
Judiciary Committee Subpoena Threat Bears Fruit:
Last week’s newsletter discussed threats by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) to potentially issue subpoenas for Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, and Robin Arkley II – all of whom appear to be involved with organizing or financing luxurious gifts for conservative Supreme Court justices. On Wednesday, Sen. Durbin announced that while this wouldn’t be necessary for Mr. Arkley, he intended to proceed with subpoenas for the other two:
“Leonard Leo has refused to cooperate in any way. Harlan Crow claimed he was willing to cooperate, but ultimately made only a limited and insufficient offer. Only now, under threat of subpoena, has Mr. Arkley provided information responsive to the Committee’s requests. Given his cooperation, I’ve decided that voting to authorize a subpoena to Mr. Arkley is not necessary at this time.” – Sen. Durbin
Yesterday, as the Judiciary Committee prepared to vote on subpoenas for Leo and Crow, Republican Committee members—led by Sen. Lindsey Graham—brought the effort to a halt by threatening to introduce a series of retaliatory amendments.
Sen. Durbin suggested they may try again with a vote next week – stay tuned!
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