OAN Commentary by: Theodore R. Malloch
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
In the shadowy and often slimy halls of Washington, where the deep state clings to power like ivy on ancient walls, President Donald J. Trump’s triumphant return signals a renewed battle for America’s soul.
The electorate delivered a resounding mandate for deregulation, economic revival, and the liberation of free enterprise from bureaucratic old chains. Yet, as Trump prepares to implement his vision, remnants of the Biden-Harris administration — entrenched holdovers in important agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), among others—stand as formidable barriers.
These unelected officials, steeped in the prior regime’s anti-innovation ethos, DEI, and statism as usual, continue to sabotage progress through outdated enforcement priorities. A stark example is the SEC’s recent pursuit of fintech entrepreneur Srinivas Koneru, where staff exploited a government shutdown to file a questionable lawsuit. This episode highlights the urgent need to purge such obstacles if Trump is to fully unleash American ingenuity and prosperity.
The Koneru case vividly illustrates how these holdovers erect huge roadblocks to Trump’s policies. Koneru, a 65-year-old retired U.S. citizen, founded Triterras, a blockchain-based platform that transformed trade finance for small businesses in commodities trading. Generating $55 million in revenue in 2021, the company went private in March 2025, with all of its past investors fully compensated. The SEC’s silly claims hark back to events five years ago—irrelevant relics in today’s dynamic markets.
Yet, during the recent 43-day government Schumer shutdown starting October 1, 2025, agency staff pressed forward, filing suit on November 7 despite the Anti-Deficiency Act’s prohibition on non-emergency work during funding lapses. No imminent threat to markets or lives justified this; it was a routine probe, conducted under fiscal cover to evade oversight. And it was staged by Biden holdovers.
Just this week, on November 23, 2025, Koneru filed a countersuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging the SEC’s illegal actions and seeking to void their complaint. This principled pushback deserves applause—it exposes the overreach and should force the agency to reconsider its misguided priorities. The SEC should drop the case forthwith, acknowledging its foundation on procedural violations and lack of public harm, rather than wasting resources on a battle that undermines trust in government.
These maneuvers reflect a broader pattern among Biden holdovers, such figures as Sam Waldon, who repeatedly donated to the Biden and Harris campaigns and ActBlue helping drive the prior administration’s regulatory assaults on crypto. Such officials perpetuate an agenda at odds with Trump’s pro-growth directives, creating institutional inertia that delays reform. Their anti-crypto stance, for instance, treats digital assets as threats rather than opportunities, stifling the very innovations Trump and people like David Sacks, his czar on such matters, champion.
Waldon’s fingerprints are all over this outrage, and his background reveals a highly partisan zealot masquerading as a neutral enforcer. Recently promoted to the elevated post, Principal Deputy of Enforcement, Waldon was a key architect of the Biden-era assault by then-Chair Gary Gensler on the crypto industry. He should be gone, not promoted.
Waldon was chief counsel of enforcement under Gensler and drove high-profile cases against Coinbase, Binance, and Justin Sun, weaponizing regulations to stifle innovation and consolidate power in the hands of big, centralized government.
His political donations tell the tale. According to FEC records, that includes contributions to Biden, Harris’s vice-presidential bid, and repeated significant infusions to ActBlue, the platform that funneled billions to Democratic causes. He even donated to Harris two days before 2024 Election Day. He is blatantly and actively anti-Trump. Why is he still around?
These aren’t casual gifts, either; they’re ideological investments in a worldview that views cryptocurrency not as a tool for economic freedom but as a threat to centralized control. Waldon’s actions reek of conflict, as he pushes enforcement priorities that align with his donors’ anti-innovation and anti-digital assets stance.
This resistance manifests in selective enforcement, ignoring due process, and prioritizing ideological battles over economic growth—barriers that slow the implementation of Trump’s Executive Orders and frustrate his pro-business mandate. They seek to retard America rather than make it great! Just weeks before Waldon’s shutdown maneuver, during a speech he delivered at Fordham University, SEC Chair, Paul Atkins himself cautioned against just this sort of approach. “The SEC staff do not always get things right the first time.” He said, urging staff to “guard against plain mistakes, extreme legal theories, misinformation, biases, and conflicts of interest.” He promised robust engagement with potential defendants, calling it “critical to due process.” Yet his own staff did the very opposite on all aspects.
Indeed, this defiance directly contravenes Trump’s policies in both letter and spirit.
Executive Order 14294, “Fighting Overcriminalization in Federal Regulations,” calls for focusing on intentional wrongdoing, not minor technicalities without scienter, as in Koneru’s case. EO 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation,” promotes blockchain and fintech to empower small enterprises and drive competition. That is what Trump policy states.
Trump’s blueprint envisions America as a global leader in innovation, where entrepreneurs like Koneru thrive without fear of arbitrary harassment. Yet, holdovers’ tactics—such as using shutdown chaos to entrench old policies—create delays, erode investor confidence, and divert resources from genuine threats like fraud.
This not only hampers immediate policy rollout but also risks driving talent and capital and investment overseas, weakening America’s competitive edge. We need to win the AI and crypto battle, not lose it.
The imperative to address these challenges is clear: The Trump administration must prioritize a comprehensive sweep of federal agencies. The deep state thrives on obscurity and tenure protections, allowing holdovers to act as internal saboteurs. Reinstating Schedule F would empower the President to reclassify and remove these leftist entrenched bureaucrats, replacing them with appointees aligned with free-market principles.
Strict performance reviews, with an eye on the President’s policy agenda, could identify those wedded to the Biden era’s statism and regulatory overkill. In the SEC, this means shifting from Biden SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s punitive approach to one that nurtures and advances crypto and fintech, redirecting enforcement toward protecting investors without crushing innovation.
The new SEC Chairman, Paul Atkins needs to drain the swamp at the SEC rather than adding to it by promoting Biden-Harris people who have advanced the failed policies of the past as evidenced by Gensler. Without such action, Trump’s agenda risks bogging down in procedural quagmires, delaying the economic boom he promised.
History reminds us that empires falter when internal decay goes unchecked. Rome’s bureaucracy grew bloated and corrupt, leading to its downfall; America must heed the lesson.
Trump’s second term offers a providential chance to reaffirm our founding ideals of liberty and enterprise. By diminishing the influence of Biden holdovers across the whole of government—through decisive personnel changes—we can clear the path for policies that foster growth and restore faith in government.
The Koneru saga is a wake-up call. Let the draining commence, thorough and unrelenting. Our nation’s future demands it; Trump won on it.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is a scholar-diplomat-strategist. He has authored 18 books and taught at Yale and the University of Oxford, served at ambassadorial level for the US in the United Nations Geneva during the end of the cold war, and been a strategist to governments and many corporations. His latest book is, GREATNESS: The Trump Revolution and the Coming Golden Age for America.
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