As one of the senior members members of the House Financial Services Committee, Tom Emmer solicited and received massive bribes from all the industries the committee us supposed to be helping regulate. Among his biggest contributors were securities and investment firms, insurance companies, commercial banks, real estate developers, etc. He also chairs the Blockchain 8, a group of 4 crooked Democrats— Ritchie Torres (NY), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Jake Auchincloss (MA) and Darren Soto (FL)— and 4 crooked Republicans— Emmer, Warren Davidson (OH), Byron Donalds (FL) and Ted Budd (NC)— which advocates for the interests of the crypto-kleptocrats. Emmer personally took tens of thousands of stolen dollars from FTX, FTX executives (straw donors) and FTX-financed operations. Sam Bankman-Fried’s GOP conduit, Ryan Salame, and other FTCX executives funneled millions to Emmer and the GOP candidates he was working elect as chair if the NRCC, through American Dream Federal Action ($12,649,179 ), GMI PAC ($1.5 million), Crypto Innovation PAC, and Defending Mainstreet ($500,000), not to mention $2 million to McCarthy’s Congressional Leadership Fund on September 28. In return for all this loot, Emmer penned the notorious Blockchain 8 letter Gary Gensler, chair of the SEC, telling him to lay off trying to regulate the crypto pyramid schemes (like FTX) and his other donors.
You may never see a better example of what Republican oversight looks like when criminals like Tom Emmer are in charge than in this House Financial Services Committee clip when Sam Bankman-Fried came to speak with the congressmembers he was financing:
“Writ large, reported Michael Schaffer for Politico about the bipartisan crypto-scandal in December, “the Washington aspect involves the speed with which the crypto industry managed to insinuate itself at the nexus of money and power across the political spectrum just as the government was grappling with how to regulate this confounding new industry. Writ small, it involves a March letter from eight members of Congress to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler sharply criticizing the organization’s ongoing investigation of blockchain and cryptocurrency firms. The legislators, most of whom had gotten significant contributions from crypto players, essentially called on the feds to back off.”
Emmer isn’t in prison, or even charged with any crimes yet. Instead he used some of the loot he got from FTX to buy a top position in the GOP House leadership (majority whip). This morning he was on Fox News saying the Republicans plan to go after “the out of control domestic spending… It’s the domestic spending that we’re going to go after.” That would be Social Security, Obamacare subsidies, Medicaid, Medicare, farm subsidies, funding the IRS…
The very first bill introduced by the new GOP majority was a performative piece defunding the IRS for their millionaire and billionaire campaign donors, who, like Trump, don’t want to be audited. They’d rather avoid paying their fair share of taxes by cheating. None of the IRS funding the GOP is going after is used to audit families making under $400,000 annually. Most Americans, though not Republicans, want to see the very rich pay more in taxes. Congressional Republicans want the to pay less— much less. Today’s IRS bill is an example, even if just for the sake of posturing, since the bill will never even be taken up by the Senate.
