Senator Richard Blumenthal has requested contracts, payment details and communications from Tether concerning its relationship with Nxum, a consulting firm co-founded by former White House crypto adviser Bo Hines.
The Connecticut Democrat’s October 22 letter is part of an inquiry by the minority of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It asks Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino for records covering the business relationship and related lobbying activity.
The request follows allegations about payments while Hines worked on White House cryptocurrency policy. Tether says an investigation conducted by external counsel found no evidence of wrongdoing.
The letter seeks the underlying business records
Blumenthal’s letter cites Wall Street Journal reporting that Tether paid more than $6 million to Nxum and had agreed to payments of $415,000 a month. The senator alleges that the relationship raises concerns about conflicts between commercial interests and public duties.
These are allegations attributed to the senator and the reporting he cites. The letter is evidence of the investigation and the questions being asked; it is not an independently verified accounting of all payments or a court finding that a law was broken.
The requested documents could help establish when agreements were made, which services were supplied and who participated in relevant communications. Payment records and contracts would provide a firmer basis for assessing those relationships than the existence of an allegation alone.
Tether disputes the implication of wrongdoing
A Tether spokesperson said the company was reviewing the letter and that external counsel had previously conducted an internal investigation that found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to The Block.
That response supplies the company’s position. Without the underlying investigation and supporting records, it should not be represented as an independent public determination resolving every question raised by the senator.
The same standard applies in the other direction: an information request cannot establish the truth of every allegation it describes. The next useful evidence would be a disclosed response, supporting documents or an identified finding from an authority.
The inquiry concerns conduct, not a reserve finding
Stablecoin businesses depend on relationships with regulators, lawmakers, banks and service providers. Those relationships can influence how an issuer operates, but questions about lobbying and consulting need to be distinguished from questions about whether a token is backed and redeemable.
Our explanation of stablecoin pegs and redemption sets out the separate role of reserves and access to repayment. This letter is not a reserve audit or an announcement that USDT redemptions have stopped.
The immediate development is the formal demand for records from a Senate minority investigation. A request for a company to respond is not a scheduled verdict or a promise that the supporting documents will become public. Any eventual findings will need to be assessed against the evidence disclosed.