SEC Chair Gary Gensler dodges Trump Media campaign finance questions

I’m going to go to something else that people are fascinated by. That’s not crypto that I think you can talk about because the case is closed. The auditing firm for Trump Media and we’ve been following Trump Media as a stock now, which of course former President Trump as the majority shareholder was charged with quote, massive fraud. This is the accounting firm, not not the company itself, BF porchers. Can you explain what the fraud was and to the extent that investors should be thinking about this? Well, so we have a system here in the US where if you want to raise money from the public, you have to get audited by a firm to check the numbers, to make sure that the numbers are accurate. And there’s auditing standards. This small firm BF Borgers that had well over 300 public company clients, audit clients was very small and did not follow the standards, didn’t follow the standards of having extra partners reviewing their files. They had times as we put out in this settlement had misled their clients about the actual work they were doing, even taking prior work and this copy and pasting into later work and the like. And so, yes, last week we settled and those public companies, there was about 350 of them, their auditor chose to settle and and not appear in before the SEC. Again, about Trump Media, a lot of folks have watched this stock move in ways that seem to defy at least historical conventions of the kind of metrics that we’re all used to as as the head of the SEC, as somebody who’s responsible for the integrity of the markets, what do you make of something like that? So we’re also paid to be merit neutral. Investors get to decide as long as they get the full, fair and complete and truthful, I would say information. They’re not getting that in crypto right. You think you think they’re not getting any crypto? I I genuinely, think, genuinely think they’re not getting that in crypto. And if they are a crypto security, it’s required and needed. Public companies need to do that as well. But their auditor, the gatekeeper, matters. And this is a case where a gatekeeper failed those 350 companies and the investors on the other side of those companies. Let me just drill into this for one more second, though. There’s an idea with a Trump Media for example and sometimes with other meme stocks that they are moving in ways that may not be attached to metrics because the metrics don’t matter because the the quoted investors are investing in it, if you even call it investing for a different purpose. Does that make sense to you or not. Look I I’ve been around capital markets for over 4 decades and absolutely some people would call it manipulating the market though that’s that’s that is the accusation that some people would say there are people effectively trying to manipulate it for for reasons that are that are other than just trying to get the the highest value. So manipulation is not allowed in our markets, in essence misleading the public and with an intent to move that price and so forth. But you are allowed, every individual is allowed to form their own view and that’s one of the beauties of our capital markets. It’s it’s that 10s of thousands and millions of people can do their own research in front of their own. Some people think it is a financing vehicle for a political campaign. Again, I’m not. I’m not going to speak. I as much as you try I’m not going to speak on anyone company but it’s what’s important is, is their disclosures are accurate and that folks aren’t in the market front running or trading on insider information or manipulating any one of the thousands of securities that trade. Different question, just this morning we put out a report actually in deal book around Blackstone and their B Reed fund around their valuations. There’s lots of questions on Wall Street about how a lot of these Reit’s and semi liquid Reit’s effectively mark their their books. Some use third parties and those numbers are defined by the third party with no option ality. In Blackstone’s case, it appears that they have allowed themselves disclosed to have latitude in how they come up with those numbers and they pay themselves based on those numbers. And so if you can actually make the numbers your own and you can pay yourself based on those numbers, how do you look at something like that? So stepping back again from any one company, valuations are very important in the fund business whether they’re registered funds that you can buy in the public called mutual funds or even private funds like private equity and and venture capital like those valuations are really critical for and and the law says that you’ve got to do those in an appropriate way. And so that’s what’s critical and why is it critical, It’s for people who are investing, they don’t overpay and people that are redeeming that they get the right valuation. And so that’s how we look at it really is to make sure that any fund advisor who’s doing the valuations is following the letter of those valuations. I would love to sit with you here for a lot longer, but we’re we’re effectively out of time. I mentioned there’s a presidential election year. Do you want to be part of this administration if the president wins again and would you want to remain the chair of the SEC. Would you want to be the Treasury Secretary? What what do you want to do next? I I I’m just focused on this job but this is one of the greatest privileges. I I mean anybody who’s listening up. I’m honored to serve my third president as the 33rd chair of the SEC overseeing $110 trillion capital markets. This is a terrific job where we can actually help Americans, investors and issuers for decades to come. So my term is well into 2026, and if I have the honor to continue to serve, I look forward to it.