Trump’s CFTC Appoints Crypto Lawyer to Lead Shrinking Enforcement Team
In brief
- The CFTC appointed crypto defense attorney David Miller to lead its enforcement division.
- The division has seen major staff cuts, as the CFTC massively pulls back enforcement under President Trump.
- The CFTC has simultaneously sought to greatly expand its purview to include crypto and prediction markets.
The CFTC announced Monday that its enforcement division, which has endured heavy cuts in the last year, will be led by a white-collar defense attorney with extensive experience representing crypto industry clients. The attorney, David Miller, was most recently a litigation partner at multinational law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he represented crypto-focused clients on matters related to commodities and securities regulation. Miller previously served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and, before that, as a CIA lawyer. He was also a consultant on the Wall Street-focused television drama Billions.
“[Miller has] a proven track record of defending market participants against the novel legal theories of overzealous regulators and plaintiffs,” CFTC chair Mike Selig said Monday in a statement. “He will play a critical role in ensuring the division is focused on its core purpose of policing fraud, abuse, and manipulation rather than setting policy.” Since President Donald Trump’s return to power, the CFTC has hemorrhaged staff, particularly in its enforcement division. The agency’s flagship Chicago office, for instance, which once boasted a team of 20 enforcement attorneys, employed zero as of February 10. Those cuts have also come at the same time the once-obscure CFTC has sought to dramatically expand its purview, by taking over regulation of the sprawling crypto market—and also the booming, controversial prediction market sector. In a statement Monday, Miller emphasized he intends to not only “foster innovation,” but also protect “the integrity of U.S. markets, including from fraud, abuse, and manipulation.”
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, however, the scope and scale of the CFTC’s enforcement actions has declined precipitously. In fiscal year 2024, for instance, the CFTC secured $17.1 billion in monetary relief on behalf of investors. That figure plummeted in 2025 by over 99.9%, to just $9.2 million.
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