The good news is that business interests are getting support during an election year. The bad news is that the business is crypto. Less than two years after the industry’s highest-profile political donor was exposed as a criminal, the lure of campaign donations from the digital-money crowd is once again proving irresistible.

Last time, Sam Bankman-Fried lavished cash on candidates in hopes of laxer regulations (before he ended up in federal prison on fraud charges). This time, crypto advocates are raising some millions to oppose unfriendly politicians. That’s led some candidates to abandon common sense in pursuit of cash.

Although the industry is good at grabbing headlines, the stakes aren’t especially high. Not even the most skeptical U.S. politicians are proposing to ban Bitcoin and other such currencies, as China and about 20 other countries have done. Instead, the debate has mostly focused on whether digital tokens should be regulated like other types of investment products. (They should be.)

President Joe Biden’s administration has done a good job limiting the risks that crypto poses, including by taking legal action against several companies and individuals — Bankman-Fried among them — for violations of money-laundering requirements and securities laws. So far Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t said whether her own approach would differ from Biden’s, but she’s under pressure to adopt a more lenient position. A policy adviser indicated this week that she wants to help the industry.

Her opponents have thrown caution to the wind. Former President Donald Trump rattled off a series of promises when he spoke to the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July. They included: appointing a council of “people who love your industry” to write crypto regulations; firing Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman (and crypto skeptic) Gary Gensler; banning the Federal Reserve from creating its own digital currency; establishing a strategic Bitcoin stockpile; and commuting the prison sentence of Ross Ulbricht, convicted in 2015 for creating a crypto marketplace for illegal goods. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent, has gone even further: Calling Bitcoin “the currency of hope,” he has pledged to direct the U.S. Treasury to invest hundreds of billions in crypto.

It’s hard to square this kind of thing with the broader national interest. In the 15 or so years since Bitcoin was invented, digital tokens have proved to be of essentially no practical value. Just 1% of Americans say they used them for a payment or money transfer last year. More often crypto is used to move money outside of government oversight. That’s helpful for criminals, terrorists and anyone under sanctions. But these are hardly the constituencies that a presidential candidate should be soliciting. Nor should policymakers be encouraging people to park their savings in digital wallets instead of stocks, bonds and other assets that support the real economy.

Instead, candidates should promise to work with Congress and regulators to ensure that the rules applied to cryptocurrencies are consistent with existing laws on fraud, money laundering and sanctions enforcement. If the technology is as innovative and useful as its advocates assert, then playing by the rules shouldn’t be a problem. No amount of campaign cash should lead candidates to think otherwise.

— The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board

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In first interview of presidential campaign, Harris defends shifting from some liberal positions

The U.S. has rarely seemed as divided by politics. The parties’ leaders and most energetic supporters see their opponents as enemies more than fellow citizens, and as a mortal threat to their hopes for the American project. Many Americans with lives beyond politics see this framing of what’s at stake — politics as a fight to the finish over the nation’s soul — as the real danger.

Hyperbolic divisiveness is one big reason why steady substantial majorities tell pollsters that the country is on the wrong track, regardless of who’s in power. Could the coming election make a difference? Division is second nature for Donald Trump; it’s hard to imagine him any other way. But there’s an opening here for Kamala Harris, if she chooses to grasp it.

This isn’t just about moving to the center, wise as that would be in many areas of policy. It’s about understanding that most Americans are liberal in the original sense of the term — and that the most committed political combatants are not. The disconnect that matters is between America’s fiercest political warriors, progressive and conservative alike, and the country they claim to stand for.

Western liberalism, as conceived in the U.S., says individuals are equal before the law. The new nation denied the full rights of citizenship to women and enslaved people, but this shouldn’t disguise the revolutionary character of liberalism at the outset. The idea that rights are pre-ordained according to social rank had ancient roots and through most of human history simply wasn’t questioned. The U.S. established itself in opposition to that creed. The great majority of Americans understand this and are rightly proud of it.

This idea of liberalism makes demands on day-to-day politics. Notice that “liberal” has two complementary meanings — one concerned with freedom (“liberty”) and the other with generosity (“liberality”). A system that insists on the equal rights of individuals breaks down without a measure of tolerance, open-mindedness and unselfishness toward one’s fellow citizens. “Equal rights” points to democracy as the only legitimate form of government, and by the same reasoning demands civility, mutual respect and a willingness to lose the argument — not because it’s nice to be polite, but because liberalism is a culture of equal standing.

Liberalism expects forthright disagreement on the proper role of state versus market, the scope of the safety net, the design of immigration laws and all the other hard questions that modern democracies must confront, and even on the values and beliefs people hold most dear. It doesn’t advance one true faith or hope to build the perfect society. Its overriding purpose is to let individuals disagree peacefully and productively as they pursue their own ideas of the good life, always respecting the rights of others to do the same.

Americans need no schooling on all this. They are instinctively liberal in the sense I’m invoking. As an immigrant, I can attest that these quintessentially liberal traits — freedom and fellowship — are also characteristically American. But the country’s political leaders and their most ardent supporters have other priorities. Progressive or conservative, they have a fight to win, and liberal restraint is often unhelpful.

Trump’s critics rightly draw attention to his illiberal or anti-liberal propensities — especially his efforts to overturn the election of 2020. His conduct over that was despicable and ought to be disqualifying. But which norm of liberal propriety calls for the Supreme Court to be packed if it renders judgments Democrats dislike? Why is it illiberal for Trump to contemplate firing hundreds of civil servants he deems to be obstructive but liberal for unelected regulators to act as legislators in all but name? “Lawfare,” celebrated by many Democrats as the remedy for Trump and his works, is a euphemism for selective prosecution and makes a mockery of equality before the law.

Trump’s angriest critics demand “liberal democracy” at any price while scorning the fathomless stupidity of roughly half their fellow citizens. So much for equal standing. The left’s most illiberal instincts have mirrored the right’s in a politics of competing catastrophisms, the death of democracy on one side and the death of freedom on the other. The watchword for responding to existential threats is always “by any means necessary” — the sentiment that crystallizes the illiberal worldview.

How might Harris respond? I wouldn’t have recommended “the politics of joy” as a campaign theme: It sounds slightly deranged. Still, it’s more appealing to liberals than the politics of rage or the politics of dread. Liberalism, I’m arguing, is as much about temperament as ideology, and the liberal temperament is optimistic.

On policy, to be sure, Harris is largely unformed and often uninformed. First a steely prosecutor, then a police defunder; in 2020 she was memorably in favor of “Medicare for All” until somebody explained what it meant; in 2024 she sees high food prices and thinks, “gouging.” For campaigning purposes, however, lack of conviction plus a sense of what most people want to hear could be a vote-winner. It was striking that “freedom” and “opportunity” figured so prominently at the Democratic Party’s convention. Both are impeccably liberal ideas, standing in marked contrast to the illiberal left’s preferred “equality” (of outcome) and “justice” (as in, “no justice, no peace”).

Whether Harris, if elected, would govern as the kind of liberal that voters want is another question. Barack Obama promised to unify the country but governed as if he wished to reinvent it. Biden cast himself as the right kind of liberal in 2020 then bowed to progressives who think “opportunity,” as opposed to “equity,” misses the point. The mere fact that Harris campaigned as a liberal would give voters no reason to believe she’d depart from this pattern once basking in the joy of victory.

On the other hand, as I say, Americans are optimists — and the alternative is Trump.

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics. Previously, he was deputy editor of the Economist and chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times.

Jack Smith is calling the Supreme Court’s bluff.

In the wake of the court’s controversial decision earlier this summer granting Donald Trump criminal immunity for official acts committed while president, Smith has refiled his indictment charging Trump with offenses connected to Jan. 6. This time, he has left out conduct the justices identified as clearly official while leaving in conduct where the justices said there were still complicated issues to be resolved.

No trial will take place before the election. But if Kamala Harris becomes president and the federal district court allows the remaining charges to proceed, Trump could still find himself facing trial for trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election. Then the case would wend its way back to the Supreme Court, which would be forced to confront the consequences of its immunity decision.

In a sense, Smith’s decision to refile charges goes all the way back to April, when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the immunity case. Then, Justice Amy Coney Barrett walked Trump’s lawyer through a series of elements of the criminal allegations, getting him to admit that each involved private conduct, not official presidential acts. As I noted at the time, Barrett was trying to create a roadmap for Smith to keep the prosecution alive even if the court issued a sweeping judgment requiring immunity for official acts, as indeed it did.

Concessions at oral argument don’t have the force of law in subsequent criminal proceedings, especially given that those concessions happened before the Supreme Court laid out its new (and extreme) legal standards for presidential immunity.

But Barrett’s efforts at oral argument at least sent Smith the message that he had the option of keeping the criminal case alive. For him not to have refiled charges would have seemed like throwing in the towel — not a good look for any federal prosecutor, and especially not for someone as tenacious by reputation as Smith.

The main shift in the new indictment is to categorize Trump as having acted criminally in his private capacity as a candidate for office in 2020, not as a sitting president. The shift follows the Supreme Court’s logic in immunizing Trump for official acts. And the new characterization is plausible, given that Trump was indeed trying as a citizen, not as president, to be reelected.

What is lost in the transition to the new formulation is the reality that Trump also tried to use his powers as sitting president to advance his private interests — a key part of the original indictment. Gone are the allegations of Trump conspiring with Department of Justice officials to get legitimate election results thrown out.

Removing the allegations that Trump abused his official powers is the only available legal strategy for Smith now that the court has ruled. The special prosecutor has no other choice.

The change, however, dramatizes part of what was so wrong with the Supreme Court’s opinion. It simply cannot be part of the genuine official powers of the president of the United States to criminally interfere with lawful election results. Immunizing Trump’s alleged conduct committed using his presidential powers subverts the rule of law. It all but invites future bad-actor presidents, potentially including Trump, to make sure their criminal acts have an official cast to avoid prosecution.

If Trump is elected, his Justice Department will withdraw the criminal charges against him, and Smith’s refiling will end up in the dustbin of history. When the Supreme Court decided the immunity case at the beginning of July, Joe Biden was still the Democratic candidate, and Trump’s victory seemed very probable. Now, with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate, the odds look very different. So Smith’s decision to refile isn’t merely the honorable act of a warrior sure to go down in the fight.

Similarly, Smith’s decision to appeal the dismissal of the charges brought against Trump in federal district court in Florida — the charges on retaining classified documents — will be more than symbolic if Trump loses the election.

But even in the scenario where Harris becomes president and the case goes forward, the Supreme Court will get the last word. Trump will appeal a decision by the federal district court in Washington to let these charges stand. After passing through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, such an appeal would end up with the justices. They would then have to apply the rules that they created in July.

The upshot is that Trump could still conceivably face conviction and sentencing in federal court. But don’t count on that happening anytime soon.

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