Republican senator calls for probe into US presidents’ sons, citing crypto ventures

Senator John Curtis has urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether the children of President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump have leveraged presidential family ties for private financial benefit. In a letter to Chair Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dick Durbin, Curtis asked the committee to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden and to examine instances in which their relationships to the presidency were used or understood to provide value. Curtis highlighted several specific concerns about Trump Jr., including the acceptance of wedding gifts from Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency projects, and advisory roles with prediction market platforms that fall under Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight. The senator noted that President Trump said his son had repaid Kremlev for the gift. The Utah Republican also sought an inquiry into Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings, pointing to substantial transactions with foreign entities and instances where his connection to the presidency was invoked. Curtis referenced Hunter Biden's December 2024 pardon by President Biden for crimes the president said his son "committed or may have committed or taken part in over the last decade," and noted Hunter's denial of involving his father in his business affairs. Curtis framed the proposed inquiry as a fact-finding effort to determine whether existing ethics, disclosure, or anti-corruption laws apply and to recommend reforms to prevent the presidency from being used for private enrichment. The call for bipartisan scrutiny comes after earlier Democratic-led requests to investigate Trump family crypto ties and follows a failed Senate vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act a week earlier. That legislation, intended to set market-structure rules for the crypto industry, did not secure enough support amid debates over ethics provisions related to presidential crypto interests; President Trump disclosed earning $1.4 billion from digital-asset–linked ventures in 2025. Curtis is serving his first term in the Senate and is not up for re-election until 2030.