U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) has introduced legislation that would prohibit the U.S. President, members of Congress, and their immediate families from owning, trading, or creating cryptocurrencies while in office, according to MSNBC reporting. The bill would mark the first major attempt to separate digital assets from political power.
Early details indicate the measure will bar elected officials and their families from holding or issuing cryptocurrencies and from accepting foreign-backed crypto investments. The California lawmaker said the initiative aims to rebuild public trust and prevent policymakers from profiting off the very technologies they regulate.
Trump's Changpeng Zhao Pardon
The proposal follows President Donald Trump's pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and seeks to eliminate what Khanna calls 'blatant corruption' at the intersection of politics and crypto. 'The pardon of Zhao is corrupt,' Khanna said on MSNBC. 'You've got a foreign billionaire engaged in money laundering and financing terrorism, who supports the president's son's cryptocurrency firm, and then the president pardons him. This is corruption in plain sight.' Zhao, the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, served four months in prison after pleading guilty to violating U.S. banking laws. His company was accused of allowing illicit money flows linked to child exploitation, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Soon after Zhao's financial backing of World Liberty Financial — the crypto project founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — was revealed, Trump granted him a pardon. Khanna's proposal directly targets that entanglement. By banning crypto ownership and trading among officials, he hopes to draw a clear boundary between public service and private gain. The measure mirrors previous calls to ban stock trading by lawmakers and follows Senator Adam Schiff's COIN Act, which specifically sought to limit the Trump family's crypto activities.
Insider Trading in Congress
Lawmakers have long and repeatedly introduced legislation in hopes to curb insider trading among members of Congress. The STOCK Act, passed in 2012 with broad bipartisan support, was designed to require members to disclose stock trades within 30 days and penalize those who used insider information for personal gain. Earlier this year, the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act (S.1498) was proposed in the U.S. Senate by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). The bill addresses concerns about conflicts of interest and potential insider trading among Members of Congress by prohibiting them and their spouses from holding, purchasing, or selling most individual stocks, security futures, commodities, and similar financial instruments while in office.