Richard Blumenthal has given Binance, Tether, World Liberty Financial and Fight Fight Fight LLC until Jan. 4, 2027, to provide records requested by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The panel said it would consider other ways to obtain the information if the companies do not comply.

Blumenthal’s letters were sent Nov. 5 with a 60-day deadline. Binance chief executive Richard Teng was separately asked to confirm receipt with subcommittee staff by Nov. 9 and begin producing documents by Nov. 30.

Blumenthal signed the Binance letter as the subcommittee’s ranking member. His office described him in the release announcing the letters as the panel’s incoming chair. Beginning in January, he is expected to lead the subcommittee rather than serve as its senior minority member, potentially giving him greater authority to escalate the requests.

The four crypto-related letters

The Nov. 5 release covered matters beyond cryptocurrency. Letters also went to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FCC Chair Brendan Carr and donors to the White House ballroom project. The four crypto recipients are connected to separate parts of the same broader inquiry.

Binance. The letter to Teng renews requests originally made Feb. 24, 2026, and again on Apr. 1, 2026. It says Binance has produced no responsive records during an inquiry that has lasted 18 months. The first production is due Nov. 30, followed by additional releases on a schedule to be agreed with subcommittee staff. Earlier correspondence was attached to the letter, placing the panel’s questions in one file.

Tether. The release links the stablecoin issuer to a Sept. 28 subcommittee report describing Tether and its dollar token as “a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network.” The Tether letter is dated the same day and carries the Jan. 4 deadline.

World Liberty Financial. Blumenthal opened an inquiry into the Trump family’s crypto ventures in May 2025. In July 2026, he held a public forum that published testimony from $TRUMP buyers who said they had lost thousands of dollars.

Fight Fight Fight LLC. The company behind the $TRUMP memecoin received its own letter on the same terms.

Each letter contains the same warning, quoted in the release: “Please also note that failure to voluntarily produce the requested records and information by January 4, 2027, will leave the Subcommittee with no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.”

An 18-month inquiry into Binance

The Binance letter provides the most detailed account of the subcommittee’s requests and states that the exchange has not adequately responded.

“For 18 months, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (‘the Subcommittee’) minority has been conducting an inquiry into the illicit use of cryptocurrencies, including Binance’s anti-money laundering policies and practices,” the letter says. It continues: “Throughout this period, despite repeated requests, you have failed to adequately respond to the Subcommittee’s requests and have not produced any responsive records.”

The correspondence identifies the following steps in the inquiry:

• Feb. 24, 2026: The subcommittee sent its first records request, containing five numbered items and a March 6 deadline. It focused on Binance counterparties Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust, as well as the dismissal of compliance staff who investigated them.
• March 2026: Binance published a formal response and a second compliance post disputing reporting underlying the inquiry.
• Apr. 1, 2026: Blumenthal renewed the request with seven numbered items and an Apr. 14 deadline. He wrote that Binance “may have provided misrepresentations or misleading information to the Subcommittee and to the public.”
• Sept. 28, 2026: The subcommittee minority published its report on Tether, $USDT and Iran’s shadow banking network.
• Nov. 5, 2026: The panel sent four letters with a Jan. 4, 2027, deadline and set Nov. 30 as Binance’s initial production date.

The correspondence contrasts the 18-month duration of the inquiry with the 60 days provided by the new letters.

The dispute over $110,000 in Iran-related transactions

A central dispute concerns the amount of business Binance conducted with Iranian crypto exchanges.

“Binance claimed that only $110,000 was directly exchanged with four major Iranian crypto exchanges last year, when based on reports, hundreds of millions of dollars have been transferred to Iran-linked entities,” the Apr. 1 letter states.

The third request in that letter asks Binance to provide year-over-year flows for six named exchanges: Nobitex, Wallex.ir, Excoino, Bitpin, Aban Tether and Bit24. It also requests the methodology used to calculate the figures, including transfers to wallets that were linked to an Iranian exchange only later.

The letter says Binance took two months to respond to law enforcement requests concerning terrorist financing by Hexa Whale and another two months to remove the shell entity involved. It also says removing Blessed Trust as a vendor took at least five months after warnings.

The correspondence compares the $110,000 figure with “nearly two billion dollars” that the Feb. 24 letter says flowed to sanctioned entities before the transfers were detected. It notes that $110,000 represents 0.0055% of the larger figure, while also distinguishing between the two measurements. Binance’s figure covers direct trades with four named exchanges, whereas the larger figure concerns reported flows to sanctioned entities through intermediary accounts.

The scope of the figures, rather than the arithmetic, is the central issue addressed by the third request. The letter also quotes a label that Binance investigators allegedly applied to some accounts: “Don’t block. Internal accounts.”

Why Jan. 4 is significant

Jan. 4, 2027, is 60 days after the letters were sent and 56 days from the date of the source report. It is also one day after the date set by the 20th Amendment for a new Congress to convene: Jan. 3, which falls on a Sunday in 2027. Lawmakers can establish a different convening day by law, so the gap between the dates could change. In either case, the deadline falls on or after the first day a new Congress can be seated.

The letters do not specify what “alternative measures” would involve. A ranking member cannot issue a subpoena independently. A committee chairman can move the panel toward issuing one, while enforcement of a Senate subpoena proceeds through the full chamber and ultimately the courts. The letters promise escalation without describing the precise steps, a common approach for a document intended to support negotiations.

The relevant comparison is the 18-month inquiry and the two-month response window. The subcommittee says it spent a year and a half seeking records and has now set a firm deadline for production.

Stablecoin figures cited in the Tether inquiry

The Tether letter is set against stablecoin market figures that are not detailed in the letters themselves. According to DeFiLlama, Tether’s $USDT had $176.80 billion in circulation on Nov. 9, representing 59.97% of the $294.80 billion across all stablecoins tracked by the data provider. USD Coin held $70.53 billion, or 23.9%.

World Liberty Financial’s $USD1, issued by another of the four recipients, had $3.42 billion in circulation, or about 1.16% of the total. Two of the four letters therefore went to stablecoin issuers. The largest of those issuers accounted for roughly three-fifths of the dollar-token market examined in the Sept. 28 report.

The report’s finding, in the subcommittee minority’s words, is that Tether and its dollar token “have become a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network.” That is a characterization by one party’s staff, not a court finding. The Nov. 5 letter asks Tether to respond to the claim by providing records.

What the letters do not establish

No subpoena appears in the file, and no court has found that Binance or Tether violated sanctions law. The letters cite underlying reporting from Fortune and The New York Times in their footnotes. The Senate documents request evidence; they do not constitute a verdict.

Binance’s public position since March has been that it cooperates with law enforcement, that exposure figures in press reports are overstated and that its compliance program is stronger than critics contend. The exchange made those arguments in its March filings and again after Blumenthal first raised the allegations. That response was previously covered by this newsroom in “Binance Slams Blumenthal’s Accusations, Stresses Top Compliance Measures.”

The committee’s wording also distinguishes allegations from established findings. It says Blumenthal is “concerned” that Binance “may have provided misrepresentations,” rather than stating that it did so. It says the records “have not been produced,” rather than saying they were destroyed. Those distinctions could be relevant if the matter reaches a court or a formal Senate enforcement vote.

Next deadlines

Four dates now define the next stage of the matter. Binance was asked to confirm receipt on Nov. 9. Its first production is due Nov. 30. Staff negotiations over a follow-up schedule would take place in December. Jan. 4, 2027, is the deadline at which the subcommittee may have to decide whether to pursue compulsory measures.

Before then, the situation could change through a public document production by any of the four recipients or a committee vote on compulsory process. Neither had occurred at the time of the source report.

The wider enforcement environment is developing separately. On Nov. 7, the Treasury Department’s OFAC branch sanctioned eight Canadian money services businesses accused of exchanging Iranian rials for cryptocurrency. That action illustrates that enforcement concerning Iran-related crypto flows is continuing independently of the Senate’s document requests, as previously reported in “OFAC Sanctions Eight Canadian Money Services Firms That Swapped Rials for Crypto.”

The letters do not change how $USDT or $USD1 trade or redeem. They do, however, add to the documentary record. After Jan. 4, the subcommittee could have records available for publication or a public record showing that a company declined to provide them.

Data: DeFiLlama.

Source: CryptoNewsNet.

This article is not intended as financial advice. Educational purposes only.