OCC chief says Democrats applying sole political pressure on World Liberty charter

What to know: The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing with banking regulators that delved into stablecoin rules and the controversial bank-charter application from World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm tied to President Donald Trump and his family. Jonathan Gould, the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, rejected assertions that he's doing Trump's bidding in the charter process and said that the only political pressure on this point is coming from Democrats. The chief of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said another stablecoin proposal is coming involving customer-identification programs.

The crypto firm tied to President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial Inc., was again a focus of political scrutiny in a congressional hearing in which the chief of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency suggested the only political pressure his agency feels on its decision of whether or not to give the firm a bank charter comes from Democrats, not Trump. For those keeping score at home, the optics of a Trump-tied firm chasing a banking license are, as the kids say, something.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould's rebuttal had come in response to Representative Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, who asked during the Thursday hearing whether Gould is "working for the American people or working as a Trump fixer, which is it?" "Your attempts to continue to pressure me are the only political pressure I've felt from anyone other than your Senate colleagues," Gould said, referring to similar questions he'd heard from Democrats including Senator Elizabeth Warren. "That is very unfortunate and unprecedented," he added, insisting that his agency will do its job under the statute governing charters.

Democrats continue to argue that World Liberty's connection to foreign investors and crypto partners that have been previously associated with illicit behavior — including global exchange Binance — suggest that it's not fit for a U.S. banking charter, and they've argued it's inappropriate for a Trump appointee to be deciding whether to give such a benefit to a business partially owned by the president and his family.

Amid Thursday's verbal sparring, Gould said his agency is following ethics laws in the application for a national trust-bank charter for World Liberty Trust Company. The Trump-tied business is also a stablecoin issuer, which was a central topic of the hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, at which the U.S. supervisors of the banking and credit union industries explained where they're at on implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.

The regulators have already issued several proposed rules to put the new law into place, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Travis Hill said another is coming soon, saying his agency and others will propose a rule requiring "customer identification programs" for stablecoin issuers "in the very near future." Kyle Hauptman, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, touted the U.S. rise of stablecoins in his testimony. "As stablecoins are more widely adopted, we Americans may no longer be made fun of for speaking about how many 'business days' a payment will take to settle. Every day is a business day with stablecoins," he said. "Tax refunds may eventually arrive on Sundays or holidays. And if we ever have a repeat of the COVID outbreak in March 2020, Americans should be able to receive emergency stimu