I Found the Commerce Secretary's Biggest Financial Conflict by Searching the Epstein Files. Why Didn't Congress?

[erronis]

https://kaitjustice.substack.com/p/i-found-the-commerce-secretarys-biggest
Kait Justice

Another mind-bending report by Kait Justice. Very long, very detailed. Just a couple of excerpts to give you an example. Please read her piece.

Howard Lutnick sat before the House Oversight Committee on May 6, 2026 and told lawmakers that Jeffrey Epstein was basically a man next door he saw three times in fourteen years, someone he chose to avoid after one ugly encounter in 2005, and somebody whose later presence in his life was, in his words, "meaningless and inconsequential." The committee spent four hours pressing him on a podcast contradiction, a massage table, an ad tech company that went out of business, and whether the phrase "one and absolutely done" meant what the words mean. They asked about a nanny's resume, a dinner guest list and a restaurant in Williamsburg. All of those questions generated headlines, and all of them are worth asking but not any of them are things that really mattered in my opinion.

Why? What should they have been asking about? I'm so glad you asked. Lutnick's family firm Cantor Fitzgerald holds a roughly five percent stake in Tether, the largest stablecoin in the world, a digital currency pegged to the US dollar that moves more money per day than most countries. Lutnick himself negotiated this deal before joining the cabinet which now exists in a family trust controlled by Howard's sons.

. . .

When Howard was confirmed as Commerce Secretary, he moved his ownership of Cantor Fitzgerald into a trust controlled by his adult children, with his son Brandon taking over as Chairman and CEO and his son Kyle stepping in as Vice Chairman, and from that point forward the family's financial relationship with Tether got a great deal deeper.

. . .

The People Who Wrote the Rules Now Work for the Companies They Wrote Them For

The GENIUS Act is the new law that sets the rules for stablecoins in America, and Trump signed it in July 2025. The person who guided that bill through the White House was a young guy named Bo Hines who ran the President's Council of Advisers on Digital Assets and worked alongside AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks to shape the administration's entire crypto policy. Hines left the White House on August 9, about three weeks after the bill became law, and Tether announced they had hired him on August 19. By September he was running Tether's entire US operation as CEO, which means he went from writing the rules to working for the biggest company those rules apply to inside of about ten days, all while keeping a "special government employee" status that lets him continue advising the White House on AI. He is on Tether's payroll and on the government advisory rolls for the same industry he helped write the rules for, at the same time.

. . .