Paul Atkins’ Corporate Lobbying History and Crypto Conflicts Make Him the Exact Wrong Person to Lead the SEC
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump’s pick to Chair the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, will go before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee on Thursday for his confirmation hearing, but his record as a corporate advisor and lobbyist, his closet full of crypto industry conflicts, and a weak record on enforcement when he was previously on the SEC make him unfit for the role.
Atkins’ long history of putting corporate interests ahead of the public interest includes:
- Atkins was an outspoken opponent against a common-sense SEC rule to require public companies to fully disclose their risky political spending to their investors.
- Atkins voted against at least 10 enforcement actions involving individuals and major corporations such as Citigroup and IBM during his 2002-2008 SEC stint.
- Atkins has long opposed large monetary penalties for corporate wrongdoing, arguing that they hurt shareholders while failing to deter fraud.
- Atkins was Wall Street’s “Expert for Hire,” serving as an expert witness hired by firms that were accused of engaging in misconduct, as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) noted in her letter to Atkins about his myriad potential conflicts of interest.
- Atkins testified at a 2019 Congressional hearing where he declined to answer a question about whether climate change is real, stating that “there’s a lot of data out there that shows various ways, so I haven’t really come to any” conclusion.
- Atkins criticized the SEC’s climate risk disclosure by arguing that the rule would require disclosure of information that is not material to the reasonable investor, despite over 95% of institutional investors supporting elements of the proposal.
- Atkins previously voted against the budget of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and has indicated support for “rolling up” the board as an independent body, despite its critical role in safeguarding the integrity of financial markets.
- Atkins has been backed by crypto companies and his consulting firm Patomak Global Partners was an advisor to and a lobbyist for FTX – the cryptocurrency platform founded by Sam Bankman-Fried – in the time leading up to its collapse.
A Public Citizen report found that over $100 million in corporate donations from crypto companies appeared to have had a major impact on the 2024 elections.
When President Trump announced in December 2024 that he would name Atkins to serve as chair of the SEC, Public Citizen was among the first to call out the danger of this nomination as a gift to the crypto industry. As Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate for Public Citizen, noted, “Crypto companies’ unprecedented political spending apparently just bought them control of the nation’s investor protection police.”
Public Citizen Democracy Advocate Jon Golinger said:
“When Paul Atkins left his SEC post the first time, he went right through the revolving door to serve the corporate interests he had just been overseeing. The SEC was created after the 1929 stock market crash to empower investors, increase transparency, and restore public trust in a broken financial system. Putting Atkins in charge gets it exactly backwards, guts the SEC’s vital watchdog mission, and will ensure corporate interests come first and the investing public’s needs come last.”
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