When the legislative talks picked up pace again, it was already late in the congressional session, with lobbyists and lawmakers well aware that the election was looming that would make it harder to secure bipartisan legislative work. All along, the ethics question stood as the center of debate and the aspect that needed to be ironed out if the rest were to proceed.
In that process, President Trump agreed to concessions twice, including a second batch of changes over the weekend. But judging from the sentiments from Gallego, one of the chief Democratic negotiators on this point, it wasn’t nearly enough.
“All President Trump wants is for the Senate to give him time to crime, and I won’t support any piece of legislation that enables him,” the Arizona senator said.
During the negotiations, Gallego and other Democrats had to turn their backs on Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, who favored strong opposition to Clarity. She kept up that view, continually underlining the crypto ties between Trump and the crypto industry from which he earned more than a billion dollars during the first year of his second term.
“I believe we can get crypto legislation that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on. But not this bill,” she said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “This bill will turbocharge Donald Trump’s unprecedented corruption.”