The many ways Trump is changing white-collar crime enforcement now include a halted insider-trading inquiry, shrinking enforcement teams and proposed rollbacks of corporate safeguards. The pattern reaches the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Justice Department and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), according to Mother Jones’ reporting.
Bloomberg reported that the CFTC was told to stop investigating suspiciously timed oil trades. The trades took place minutes before Trump posted that he was rescinding threats to attack Iranian power plants. A top adviser to the agency’s Trump-appointed chairman directed investigators to retract a referral to agency lawyers.
The episode adds to a broader decline in federal enforcement of financial crimes during Trump’s second term. Experts cited by Mother Jones said the pullback could make corporate fraud more likely over time, though they did not say that weaker enforcement immediately causes companies to commit fraud.
Many ways Trump is changing enforcement priorities
The SEC has dropped a case against crypto exchange Coinbase and halted a prosecution against a Chinese crypto entrepreneur who bought millions in tokens from a Trump family crypto venture. The White House later pardoned Binance and its former chief executive.
A private-sector analysis found that the SEC initiated five enforcement cases against companies in half a year, the lowest first-half figure in at least 16 years. Separately, agency data showed nearly 30 percent fewer new enforcement actions in fiscal year 2025 than in the prior year. Staffing at the corporate watchdog had fallen by 17 percent, with much of that decline in enforcement.
The head of the SEC enforcement division left after six months, reportedly following disagreements about acting against entities that support Trump. Sens. Jack Reed and Elizabeth Warren raised concerns in letters to the agency. A separate Warren bill on federal officials and banks also addresses questions about public officials’ financial interests.
Some enforcement slowdown is common when a new president takes office, said Eugene Soltes, a Harvard Business School professor who studies white-collar crime and corporate compliance. He said this administration’s lighter-touch approach goes beyond that typical transition. “This seems to be a direct output of policy shifts,” Soltes said.
Corporate rules and prosecutors face changes
Trump temporarily paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after taking office. When the administration lifted the pause in June 2025, new guidelines focused enforcement on cases where a US company’s conduct abroad disadvantaged a competitor. The law prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials for business interests.
The SEC has proposed rescinding its pay-to-play rule, which has existed for nearly 20 years and limits investment advisers’ access to public employee pension funds. It also proposed scrapping a rule about disclosing shareholder concerns in public company filings, after announcing it would mostly stop enforcing it.
At the Justice Department, Attorney General Todd Blanche ordered several financial-crime divisions consolidated into the National Fraud Enforcement Division. The planned team of about 500 attorneys and staff would focus on healthcare fraud, trade fraud, tax evasion and fraud against the government. Vice President JD Vance was assigned to oversee the effort.
Brandon Garrett, a Duke University law professor who tracks corporate prosecutions, said the department has been dramatically altered. He pointed to earlier periods when reduced oversight preceded major failures, including savings and loan collapses, Enron’s bankruptcy and the financial crisis that cost roughly 10 million Americans their homes to foreclosure.
Soltes cautioned that weakened enforcement may first change how much companies and boards invest in compliance, with effects becoming visible years later. Related Financial Tech Times coverage examines how Fed policy shifts affect bond markets and how a stablecoin startup is building a compliance platform. Garrett’s question, as quoted by Mother Jones, is whether fewer prosecutions are creating a larger risk of corporate fraud.
