Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested potential attacks on hers and Representative Katie Porter’s 2024 campaigns could be funded by “corporate money” connected to crypto supporters.
In an interview with Pod Save America released on Feb. 18, United States President Barack Obama’s former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, questioned Senator Warren on the “Republican crypto enthusiast” John Deaton, who was considering challenging the Massachusetts senator for her seat in the 2024 election. Senator Warren, an outspoken skeptic who has often linked digital assets with illicit activities, suggested “corporatists” could attempt to “spend any amount of money needed” to back challengers to her and Representative Porter.
“Your push to regulate [crypto] has seemingly attracted a potential challenger to you in your Senate race,” said Favreau. “That could mean a flood of money from crypto Super PACs [Political Action Committees] like the one attacking Katie Porter here in California’s Senate race.”
Favreau was likely referring to Fairshake, a SuperPAC backed by crypto firms, including Ripple and Coinbase, which released an ad spot in February claiming Representative Porter took campaign contributions from “big pharma, big oil, and the big bank executives.” Andrew Sheeler of the Sacramento Bee rated the ad as “mostly false” for misrepresenting companies that had donated to Porter’s campaign as significant institutions in the industry.
“Corporate special interests are spending millions to distort my record,” said Representative Porter in a Feb. 14 X post.
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According to Senator Warren, neither her campaign nor Porter’s accepted “corporate PAC money” and relied on small donations in the race for two U.S. Senate seats. In the interview, she defended her push to pass the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act (DAAML), claiming that it was “not so” that crypto was too complicated to regulate.
“There are all these gaps in the system when it comes to crypto, and the consequence of that is that crypto has become the place to go for the drug traffickers, the human traffickers, the rogue nations, the terrorists,” said the Massachusetts senator. “There are some crypto folks who have giant buckets of money to spend, and so, they hire this lobbying army to go out [against DAAML].”
Election day for the 2024 candidates in the U.S. will be on Nov. 5, with control of the House of Representatives, Senate and Presidency potentially able to go to either Republicans or Democrats. Cointelegraph reached out to Fairshake for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
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