By Chris Prentice and Hannah Lang
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic commissioner Kristin Johnson on Wednesday said she plans to resign from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, becoming the latest of the currently four-person commission to announce a plan to leave the regulator.
The commission, which is awaiting congressional approval of Trump appointee Brian Quintenz to lead the agency, currently consists of an evenly-split commission, all of whom have said they plan to leave the agency in the near future. Johnson on Thursday became the last of the commissioners to announce her exit.
“Having served my full term, I have notified the President of my intent to step down as a CFTC Commissioner later this year,” Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday, calling the regulator a “small-but-mighty” agency.
Johnson was nominated to be a commissioner by former President Joe Biden and was sworn into the role in 2022. Her term expired last month. She has been on leave from Emory University while in government service, and will be returning to academia after she leaves the government.
The Biden administration last year had nominated Johnson for a top Treasury Department role, but that move and other Democratic nominations stalled after President Donald Trump won the White House in November.
During her time at the CFTC, Johnson advocated for stronger rules to protect consumers from fraud in cryptocurrency markets after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, and focused on the ways artificial intelligence could be used both to commit financial crimes and to police them.
All of the four current CFTC commissioners have resigned or have announced their forthcoming resignations, including Christy Goldsmith Romero — a Democrat — and Republican commissioner Summer Mersinger, who is departing the regulator at the end of the month to lead a crypto trade group. Trump’s pick to lead the commission, Brian Quintenz, has yet to have a congressional hearing to examine his nomination.
Republican commissioner Caroline Pham is leading the CFTC on an acting basis, but she has said she intends to depart the agency once Quintenz is sworn in.
The planned exits leave the CFTC potentially with a single-person commission at a time when the regulator is expected to take on increased oversight of new markets, including cryptocurrency. President Donald Trump, whose family is building a crypto business, has pledged to turn the U.S. into the world’s crypto capital.
(Reporting by Chris Prentice and Hannah Lang; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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