SEC won't say if Clinton campaign CFO, Strzok's wife are recused from its Truth Social probe

Report said Chair Gary Gensler is leading the investigation, a possible conflict of interest given his role in 2016 campaign for President Trump's rival.

By Greg Piper

Published: August 25, 2022 11:41am

Updated: August 25, 2022 9:01pm

The Securities and Exchange Commission is declining to comment on a report that agency Chairman Gary Gensler — who was the CFO for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign — is leading its investigation of the merger of Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the ex-president's Truth Social, with the special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp.

In a Gettr post Monday on the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid, RealClearInvestigations journalist Paul Sperry claimed Gensler is leading the SEC investigation and had "recently named" Melissa Hodgman as associate director of enforcement.

Hodgman is married to Peter Strzok, the FBI agent fired in 2018 for anti-Trump texts who continues to make Russia-related claims about Clinton's 2016 rival.

An SEC spokesperson identified as "Cory" pointed Just the News to its public statements about Hodgman, who joined the agency in October 2016 as associate director of enforcement and was named acting director at the outset of the Biden administration.

She returned to her earlier role when Gurbir Grewal took over as permanent director in mid-2021, Cory said, after Just the News noted her current position is not identified anywhere on the SEC website.

The SEC won't comment on what role, if any, Gensler and Hodgman are playing in the Truth Social investigation or whether they offered to recuse themselves or if the agency required their recusal for the appearance of conflict of interest, Cory said.

Sperry's post claimed the Biden administration "potentially walked away with an untold number of personal and business documents, including ones that may be related to Truth Social and the Biden SEC's ongoing investigation," from the FBI's Aug. 8 raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, in Florida.

Sperry was recently booted from Twitter after a series of tweets that cited "speculation" that the FBI had a "PERSONAL stake" in the raid related to the Spygate revelations, identified "conflicted DOJ officials" briefed on the raid and contrasted the raid with the FBI's approach to Clinton and the "33,000 potentially classified documents" she deleted.