David Sacks’ role as President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar could work out very well for his investments, as well as his friends, according to a new report The New York Times.
However, Sacks fired back in a post on X, in which he described a five-month reporting process in which accusations were “debunked in detail.”
“Today they evidently just threw up their hands and published this nothing burger,” Sacks said. “Anyone who reads the story carefully can see that they strung together a bunch of anecdotes that don’t support the headline.”
This isn’t the first time critics have suggested that there may be conflicts of interest between Sacks’ political role and his investments. For example, Senator Elizabeth Warren — a Democrat from Massachusetts — said earlier this year that Sacks “simultaneously leads a firm invested in crypto while guiding the nation’s crypto policy,” an “explicit conflict of interest” that would “normally” be prohibited under federal law.
But the NYT’s story (under the headline “Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House is Benefiting Himself and His Friends,” and credited to five bylined reporters) seems to offer a more comprehensive view, with an analysis of his financial disclosures suggesting that among Sacks’ 708 tech investments, 449 are AI companies that could benefit from the policies he supports.
Sacks has received two White House ethics waivers declaring he would sell most of his crypto and AI assets. However, the NYT said his public ethics filings do not disclose the remaining value of his crypto and AI investments, nor do they say when he sold off the assets he divested.
Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor specializing in government ethics, made similar points in July after reviewing Sacks’ crypto waiver, telling TechCrunch, “This is graft.”
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The NYT also said that Sacks’ filings classify hundreds of investments as hardware or software, rather than AI, while the companies pitch themselves as AI …