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Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent Cantor Fitzgerald a 13-item request for records on its business relationship with Tether, the issuer of USDT, according to Decrypt. The letter, dated Thursday and addressed to Cantor chairman Brandon Lutnick, asks how the firm checks that Tether follows U.S. sanctions and anti-money-laundering rules, and sets a response deadline of Oct. 23.
Blumenthal also wants to know how much Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s family has earned from the arrangement. The letter describes the minority’s probe as an investigation into the illicit use of cryptocurrencies and the Trump Administration’s self-dealings with crypto firms, and it is a request for information rather than a subpoena. Nothing in it is a finding of wrongdoing, and it does not accuse Cantor of breaking a specific law.
Also readBlumenthal Report: 84% of 846 Iran-Linked Wallets Used USDT
Key facts
- Cantor Fitzgerald has a 5% stake in Tether that Blumenthal says rose from $600 million to an estimated $10 billion since Trump returned to office.
- Blumenthal’s letter says Howard Lutnick made more than $250 million in that period, including a $192 million distribution from Cantor.
- The letter asks for the terms of any Tether loan that helped Lutnick move his Cantor stake to his children, tracking a reported loan to a trust for his four children.
- Cryptopolitan puts the figure Blumenthal cites for the Lutnick windfall at $250 million, and reports that the Cantor-Tether arrangement began with a 2021 custody role before a 2024 equity deal.
- Cantor has until Oct. 23 to respond and is asked to preserve all documents, records and communications tied to the Tether relationship.
The letter and the Tether relationship
Cantor acts as Tether’s custodian, safeguarding the reserves meant to back every USDT in circulation. Blumenthal noted that although Tether says it operates out of El Salvador, the vast majority of its assets sit in the United States under Cantor’s custodianship. He asked whether Cantor has ever weighed ending the relationship, whether it requires independent audits of Tether, and for its communications with the President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets and any lobbying on Tether’s behalf.
Howard Lutnick ran Cantor until the Senate confirmed him as Commerce Secretary in February 2025, after which Brandon Lutnick took over as chairman. In addition to the Tether-related records, Blumenthal wants Howard Lutnick’s own correspondence on Tether from his time at the firm, including any discussion of Tether with the White House or state and federal regulators.
Also readTether Faces $42.4M Lawsuit Over USDT Freeze Requested by US Investigators
Coincentral reports that Cantor began acting as custodian for the U.S. Treasury bonds backing USDT in 2021, and that Howard Lutnick helped arrange Cantor’s investment in Tether in April 2024, before leaving for the administration. The senator’s letter claims Cantor’s stake has appreciated sharply over that stretch, and says the firm also collects tens of millions of dollars a year from the assets it holds for Tether.
Why it matters
The request lands 10 days after the subcommittee’s Democratic staff released a report, titled “Tethered to Terrorism,” finding that 84% of 846 crypto wallets sanctioned or targeted for seizure over links to Iran and its proxies used USDT exclusively or nearly exclusively. As Decrypt notes, that headline figure rests unevenly on two lists: 87% of the 757 wallets designated by Israel’s counter-terror finance bureau transacted mostly in USDT, against 57% of the 101 designated by OFAC.
USDT is the largest stablecoin and a core piece of market plumbing for trading and cross-border transfers, so scrutiny of its custodian and reserves carries weight well beyond the two firms. The same accessibility that makes stablecoins useful can complicate sanctions enforcement, since tracing a blockchain transaction and establishing who controls a wallet are separate problems. Cantor’s dual role as an equity holder and the custodian of the reserve assets is what makes the compliance questions raised in the letter consequential.
Tether, which can lock a wallet so the tokens inside cannot move, published a statement the same day citing roughly $550 million in Iran-linked freezes this year, including $344 million in April and more than $130 million in July. It did not address the report directly. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said, according to Cryptopolitan, that the company had helped authorities worldwide freeze more than $4.9 billion in assets, including over $2.4 billion through cooperation with U.S. authorities.
Cryptopolitan also reports a Tether freeze of $42.4 million in USDT linked to Thai businessmen, who are now suing the firm and claim it acted without a warrant in October 2025 at the informal request of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. Authorities in North Carolina’s Eastern District obtained a seizure warrant in February 2026 as part of a $61 million pig-butchering case. The plaintiffs deny the government’s charges.
What to watch
Cantor’s responses are due Oct. 23, and the firm has been asked to preserve every document tied to the Tether relationship until then. Elsewhere, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden had asked Lutnick and Tether about the trust loan in April, and Coincentral reports Blumenthal has asked the Treasury and Justice departments to examine possible sanctions violations. Prediction markets cited by Coincentral show Democrats with a good chance of winning back the Senate in November, at 61% on Kalshi and 64% on Polymarket.
The letter is a records request, not an enforcement action, and the claims about Tether and the Lutnick family are Blumenthal’s, built on press reports and his staff’s earlier work. Nothing here is financial advice, and crypto markets remain volatile and uncertain.
Sources: Decrypt, Cryptopolitan, Coincentral
