Trump’s possible next AI czar, Jay Clayton, helped pioneer the SEC’s crypto crackdown

Clayton, who did not respond to a message from CoinDesk, previously served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York before being appointed this year as Trump’s director of national intelligence. If he becomes a leader in the positioning of the new technology, the AI industry could note his record as a watchdog for digital assets.

The regulation-by-enforcement crypto stance the industry decried under former Chairman Gary Gensler, a Democratic appointee of previous President Joe Biden, had its beginnings in Clayton’s tenure running the SEC. Clayton, who was appointed chairman by Trump in his first administration, began the high-profile legal fight with Ripple Labs as he was about to exit the agency in 2020.

That was one of the major enforcement cases the SEC conducted against a significant industry name, having accused Ripple of failing to register some $1.3 billion of its XRP tokens as securities. (The case was later halted by another Trump appointee, current SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, whose agency dismissed further pursuit of the court action last year.) But Ripple was only the final chapter of a lengthy crypto enforcement record in Clayton’s tenure.

In 2017, he established the SEC’s “Cyber Unit” to focus on the emerging sector, and began policing initial coin offerings (ICOs) and other industry activity. By the time Clayton left in 2020, the agency issued a report outlining his enforcement record, including the 57 cases his agency brought against digital assets, blockchain businesses and ICOs.