Blumenthal demands Cantor records on Tether stake and custody role

Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Cantor Fitzgerald to hand over records on its business relationship with Tether and on how much Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's family has earned from it. The Oct. 8 letter to chairman Brandon Lutnick lists 13 requests with responses due Oct. 23, and it asks the firm to preserve every related document in the meantime.

Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, framed the request as part of a probe into the illicit use of cryptocurrencies and the Trump administration's self-enrichment and self-dealings with crypto firms. The letter is a request for information rather than a subpoena. It does not accuse Cantor of breaking a specific law, and nothing in it is a finding of wrongdoing, as reported Oct. 9.

"Disturbingly, Cantor Fitzgerald's lucrative business arrangements with Tether come at the expense of America's national security," Blumenthal argued, according to the same report.

The figures in the letter are the senator's, built on press reports and his staff's earlier work. Blumenthal wrote that Lutnick has made more than $250 million since President Donald Trump returned to office, including a $192 million distribution from Cantor. Over the same stretch, he said, Cantor's 5 percent stake in Tether climbed from $600 million to an estimated $10 billion, on top of tens of millions of dollars a year the firm collects from the assets it holds for Tether, Decrypt reported. Unchained matched the request structure on Oct. 9, describing a 13-item records request to Brandon Lutnick with an Oct. 23 deadline, in its Oct. 9 piece.

What the letter seeks

Cantor acts as Tether's custodian, safeguarding the reserves behind USDT. Blumenthal noted that although Tether claims to operate out of El Salvador, the vast majority of its assets sit in the United States under Cantor's custodianship. "Given the longstanding and deeply intertwined relationship between Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald, and its substantial relationships within the Trump Administration, I am writing to request information about your business partnership with Tether and to learn about your practices for detecting violations of American banking and sanctions laws," he wrote, as Decrypt quoted.

"Just as Tether has made untold millions in interest and investments from the stablecoins used in these illicit activities, so has Cantor Fitzgerald profited from its relationship with Tether," the letter says.

The requests cover how Cantor checks that Tether follows US sanctions and anti-money-laundering rules, its know-your-customer policies, whether it has ever weighed ending the relationship, and its communications with the President's Council of Advisors on Digital Assets. Blumenthal also wants Howard Lutnick's own Tether records from his time running Cantor, including any discussion of Tether with the White House or regulators and any lobbying on Tether's behalf.

One request tracks a reported loan from Tether to a trust for Lutnick's four children, for an undisclosed amount, made around the time they bought out their father's Cantor stake. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden asked Lutnick and Tether about that loan in April. Howard Lutnick ran Cantor until the Senate confirmed him as Commerce Secretary in February 2025, and his son Brandon now chairs the firm.

The letter landed 10 days after subcommittee Democratic staff released "Tethered to Terrorism," a report finding that 84 percent of 846 crypto wallets sanctioned or targeted over links to Iran and its proxies used USDT exclusively or nearly so. The headline rests unevenly on two lists: 87 percent of 757 wallets designated by Israel's counter-terror finance bureau against 57 percent of 101 designated by OFAC. Tether published a same-day statement citing roughly $550 million in Iran-linked freezes this year, including $344 million in April and more than $130 million in July, without addressing the report directly, Decrypt noted. The Senate PDF of the letter could not be opened directly during research, so every quotation here comes through the two outlets' copies. Cantor has until Oct. 23 to respond.