The White House isn’t providing clarity on the fate of President Donald Trump’s pick for a key Wall Street regulator position, and it’s causing confusion on the Senate committee tasked with advancing the president’s nomination.
On Monday, the Senate Agriculture Committee cancelled a vote to advance Brian Quintenz, who Trump nominated to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Since then, an apparent campaign against Quintenz by some of Trump’s biggest supporters in the cryptocurrency industry has spilled out into the open.
Sen. John Boozman, who chairs the committee, told NOTUS that “the White House sent word over and said that they’d like for it to be delayed” and did not provide a reason. There seemed to be some confusion Thursday about whether the White House has cleared the committee to move forward with the Quintenz vote.
Boozman told NOTUS that the White House “sent word that they’re fine with him.” But Sara Lasure, a Senate Agriculture Committee spokesperson, said “[w]e have not heard anything further from the White House.” When NOTUS asked if that meant the committee had not gotten the green light to move forward, she replied, “Correct.”
There is “no announcement yet, as of right now,” a source close to the White House told NOTUS. In other words, his nomination is still stalled.
When NOTUS told Boozman what Lasure and the source said, he said he was “very confused.”
Quintenz was CFTC commissioner during the first Trump administration, and he had his confirmation hearing before the committee in June. He’d been widely expected to sail through, but he’s run into some headwinds.
The gambling industry has asked the committee to hold Quintenz’s nomination until he agrees to review prediction markets incursion into sports betting, which he would not commit to during his hearing. And two Trump-supporting billionaires, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, reportedly went right to the president with their concerns.
The source close to the White House declined to confirm the call with the Winklevoss brothers, but when NOTUS asked if the call between the brothers and the president influenced the decision to stall the vote, said no.
“There were some concerns before that,” the source said, declining to elaborate.
Politico reported that the Winklevoss twins, who run the crypto company Gemini, pressed Trump over the weekend to axe Quintenz and find a new nominee. The brothers reportedly argued that Quintenz would not shake up the CFTC and does not align with the president’s agenda.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Politico that Quintenz is still the nominee and that “we look forward to his swift confirmation.” The White House, Quintenz, the Winklevosses and Gemini did not return NOTUS’ requests for comment.
Tyler Winklevoss later told the New York Post he was concerned with Quintenz’s conflict of interest. Quintenz sits on the board of the prediction market giant Kalshi, which the CFTC oversees, and has pledged to step down if confirmed. Emails obtained by The Closing Line, a newsletter focusing on gambling industry news, raised questions about Quintenz’s level of engagement with the agency while still on the board of Kalshi.