The Trump administration has issued a blanket ethics waiver to venture capitalist David Sacks, now the president’s special advisor for artificial intelligence and crypto, clearing him to work on regulatory issues directly related to his financial holdings, according to a White House memorandum reviewed by the Lever.
The waiver comes a month after President Donald Trump fired the Senate-confirmed director of the Office of Government Ethics — the independent agency responsible for enforcing federal ethics laws.
“I am granting you a waiver . . . of any conflict of interest regarding particular matters of general applicability concerning the digital asset industry,” reads the March 5 memo to Sacks from White House counsel David Warrington.
A crypto industry multimillionaire, Sacks has previously denied any current conflicts of interest in his new governmental role. But the new memorandum states that Sacks’s own disclosure materials note he retains financial interests in venture capital funds that “may presently have some minor digital asset industry holdings or might in the future.”
Sacks’s direct venture capital interests are in Craft Ventures, Beldore Capitol LLC, and AL Ventures. Craft Ventures, which Sacks cofounded, still also has a sizable stake in numerous digital asset companies such as Lightning Labs and BitGo — the latter of which represents 2.4 percent of the fund’s portfolio, according to the disclosure listed in the memorandum. Overall, crypto investments make up 3.7 percent of Craft’s total assets.
The memorandum’s assessment does not dispute this conflict but concludes they’re “a small fraction of your and Craft Venture’s holdings.”
Sacks’s new job also oversees policy governing artificial intelligence technology being adopted across myriad industries. He remains listed as a “cofounder and partner at Craft” on the firm’s website, and Craft lists portfolio companies focusing on…
Auteur: Luke Goldstein
