Press Releases
Accountable.US Statement on Howard Lutnick’s Nomination to Serve as Commerce Secretary
WASHINGTON, DC — In response to President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, to lead the Department of Commerce, government watchdog Accountable.US released the following statement highlighting Lutnick’s glaring conflicts of interest.
Howard Lutnick’s questionable qualifications to lead the Department of Commerce begin and end with his loyalty to the President-elect. Lutnick’s company’s violations resulting in financial regulator fines and millions in right-wing political donations shows that political devotion takes precedence over actual experience in Trump’s cabinet.”
Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk.
Since the beginning of 2009, Lutnick has made over $19 million in political donations, almost all of which went to Republican candidates, PACS, and party committees. In the 2024 cycle alone, Lutnick has donated $6 million to Trump’s Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC, including a $5 million donation in August 2024.
Lutnick’s lowlights include:
- In 2023, Cantor Fitzgerald was fined $1.4 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission for “repeatedly failing to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders.” In 2022, Cantor Fitzgerald agreed to pay $16 million in fines after the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission found it was among 11 banks and brokerage firms that had widespread use of unauthorized communication methods such as WhatsApp and Signal.
- Lutnick has faced allegations from other Trump campaign officials that he is using his position as co-chair of Trump’s transition team to gain access to powerful political figures and benefit Cantor Fitzgerald and its companies, especially its interests in the crypto company Tether, and a new commodities trading platform.
- The BGC Group, a spin-off brokerage of Cantor Fitzgerald headed by Lutnick, is also in a dispute with CME Group, a powerful futures and commodities exchange, and is launching a competing trading platform, potentially creating a major regulatory conflict should Lutnick join the administration.
- In September 2022, video-sharing platform Rumble went public through a merger with Cantor Fitzgerald’s CF Acquisition Corp. VI, with Lutnick praising Rumble’s “massive growth in users and engagement.” In December 2021, Rumble reached a “wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement” with the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Trump stated he had “selected the Rumble Cloud to serve as a critical backbone for TMTG infrastructure” because he wanted his company to continue “align[ing] with service providers who do not discriminate against political ideology.
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