Senate Democrat Demands Tether Records on $6.3 Million Paid to Ex-White House Adviser's Firm

Senator Richard Blumenthal has given Tether until Nov. 3 to hand over records of its dealings with Bo Hines and his consulting firm, Nxum, escalating a Senate probe into $6.3 million that reportedly flowed to the firm while Hines helped write U.S. stablecoin law inside the White House.

Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and the top minority member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent the demand in a letter to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino on Thursday. The letter builds on an Oct. 14 Wall Street Journal investigation into the payment arrangement.

Who is Bo Hines, and why does the money matter?

Hines served as executive director of President Donald Trump's Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets and was a key architect of the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin statute signed in July 2025. He left the White House on Aug. 9, 2025. The following month, Tether named him CEO of its newly created U.S. division.

According to the Journal, Nxum has earned $6.3 million from a deal Tether struck in May 2025, while Hines was still in government. The structure matters. Tether agreed to pay a marketing firm, Notorious, $415,000 per month. Notorious passed most of the first payment to a wallet used by Nxum, where the funds split three ways. Later payments went directly to Nxum after Hines left office. Hines retained his one-third stake in Nxum throughout his White House tenure.

The Journal also reported that Hines urged lawmakers to double the GENIUS Act's compliance window from 18 months to 36 months, a change that chiefly benefited Tether. Messages reviewed by the paper showed Hines sharing talking points about Republican holdouts with his Nxum partners. After a call from Ardoino, Hines's father and Nxum co-owner Todd Hines wrote: "They want us to obliterate these members that are fighting crypto."

What does Blumenthal allege?

Blumenthal wrote that the payment structure suggests Tether "was likely well aware of the illegality and impropriety" of paying a sitting official, and that the arrangement "implicates federal ethics, anticorruption, and lobbying laws." He also demanded information on a Nxum pitch deck, reported by the Journal, in which Tether would buy a 25% stake in the firm for $56 million.

A Nxum representative told the Journal that Hines was not involved in the Tether deal while in government and "did not receive any Tether-derived funds during that period."

Tether responded publicly on Thursday. "Tether is aware of the allegations reported in The Wall Street Journal that form the basis of Senator Blumenthal's letter," the company said in a statement. "External counsel previously conducted an in-depth internal investigation into the matter, which found no evidence of wrongdoing."

A widening inquiry

The letter is Blumenthal's second Tether-linked demand this month. On Oct. 8, he asked Cantor Fitzgerald, Tether's reserve custodian and a 5% shareholder chaired by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's son, for records on that relationship.

That request followed a report from Blumenthal's staff finding that most Iran-linked wallets used USDT. Tether countered by citing roughly $550 million in Iran-linked freezes, including $344 million in April alone.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick defended Tether at his confirmation hearing last year. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden pressed him in April over a reported Tether loan to a trust for his children.

What does this change for Tether's U.S. expansion? The Nov. 3 deadline now sits squarely between the company's hiring of Hines and its efforts to operate under the GENIUS Act he helped draft, and the subcommittee's document demands signal that the compliance window Tether sought may prove shorter in practice than the 36 months written into law.

By Nathan Brooks