Sen. Richard Blumenthal is demanding records from Tether over reported multimillion-dollar payments to a consulting firm co-founded by Bo Hines, the White House’s former top crypto adviser.
Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said Thursday he had sent letters to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and to Nxum, the consulting firm Hines started with his father, in a press release from his office. The letters request records and information related to contracts, payments, communications and lobbying between Tether and Nxum. A third letter reportedly went to Hines himself.
The inquiry targets payments Blumenthal’s letter describes as exceeding $6 million, reportedly under a strategic communications arrangement that began weeks after Hines took office. Hines led the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets from January to August 2025, then joined Tether as a strategic adviser and later became chief executive of Tether US. During his White House tenure he helped steer the GENIUS Act, the first federal framework for stablecoins, through Congress, and Tether launched its US-based stablecoin USAT under the new law.
“Tether’s alleged multimillion-dollar payment to a firm controlled by the White House official primarily responsible for cryptocurrency policy implicates federal ethics, anticorruption, and lobbying laws,” Blumenthal said in the letter.
Tether pushed back. A company spokesperson said Tether is aware of the allegations that form the basis of the senator’s letter, and that “external counsel previously conducted an in-depth internal investigation into the matter, which found no evidence of wrongdoing.” The company, which issues the world’s largest stablecoin, said it was still reviewing the letter.
It is the senator’s second move against Tether in a month. Last month his office released findings that Tether had become central in Iran’s shadow banking system and the financing activities of terrorist groups, which Tether disputed at the time, saying it helps authorities find bad actors. The new letter is an inquiry and does not establish that Tether, Hines or Nxum acted unlawfully.
