Inside Trump's Months-Long Effort to Get His Signature on US Currency

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1:54Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Time for our weekly check-in with Jason Leopold, who does so much digging and we get to reap the fruits of his efforts. The benefits. I love it. I love it. Hey, and this leads us to some newly released documents that offer a glimpse into the months-long effort to put a sitting president's signature on U.S. currency for the first time and the resulting tension inside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Yeah, let's get to it, because he got his hands on those documents.

2:35Jason Leopold, back with us. Bloomberg News, senior investigative reporter. He is the author of the FOIA Files newsletter. It comes out each Friday, a new one. You can read it and subscribe on the Bloomberg terminal or by heading to Bloomberg.com slash newsletters. Jason also hosts the podcast Disclosure. He is also executive producer of the new documentary, The Real Wolf of Wall Street. It premiered in July exclusively on Paramount Plus, and you can check out all those episodes. Hey, hey, hey, you just have like this long list. By the way, thank you for that. You're welcome. Check will be in the mail.

3:08Okay, deal. Now I can go on my vacation. I'll have the check in the mail. Hey, listen, talk to us about this. It is pretty significant that Donald Trump, we're going to see his signature on a U.S. currency. As Emily reminded us, who even uses U.S. currency anymore? But you did some digging. Tell us what you looked into and what you got. Yeah. And this is part of the, this is the extension from the banners to, you know, Trump's image on passports. It's trying to get an understanding of how this is all happening and what's taking place behind the scenes. So in March, the Department of Treasury released, they issued a press release saying that Trump's signature would appear on U.S.

3:52currency later this year. And Scott Besant noted that it would be $1 bills. So immediately, I wanted to find out how this happened, because this is the first time that a sitting president's signature would appear on US currency. So that's unprecedented. I went back and forth with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for quite some time. They ultimately released a couple of dozen pages of emails to me. And it really revealed that there was, one, some tension around this project, which began last year, say around October, when they were discussing it. And the treasurer at the time was on board, but they were moving very quickly.

4:51They were looking first to add Trump's name to a$10 bill. And the director of Bureau of Engraving and Printing, she seemed to have some hesitancy about all of this. So it's really kind of a fascinating look behind the scenes as to what they were working on and how quickly they were trying to move while also recognizing, at least on the Bureau of Engraving and printing side how questionable this was. But this is happening now, right? Like, I guess the pushback wasn't successful? No. In fact, you know, as far as the pushback, I'm hoping to get more documents that may reveal exactly what that looked like.

5:42But in May, the director of Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Patricia Solomine, she was abruptly reassigned to another position. No reason why. She ultimately left the agency. She is all over these emails and she is the one who you could you could sort of get a sense of that. She was dealing with some with tension around, you know, in discussions with Treasury related to this. And then, you know, ultimately what happens is that they released their press release and it was I was unaware of it. But there was a public outcry, apparently enough or big enough that it resulted in people sending emails to the U.S.

6:35Mint that BEP, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, thought was perhaps threatening. And they involve the Secret Service, the FBI in this, as well as a police department in Fort Worth, Texas, where Bureau of Engraving and Printing has their printing facility. I just thought that this one note or this one line in that email in particular was really interesting. And it was from the security manager at BEP. And he says, obviously, there is a sector of the population who are not happy with this decision. Yeah, I do. I agree. And I can see why you are interested. I got to go back to, though, something in your story that's on the Bloomberg, Jason, that the Treasury Division reacted large portions of the documents.

7:37You got 29 pages. You're still waiting on a dozen more that need to be reviewed by the Federal Reserve Board and other Treasury offices. What might they have redacted? Well, it's pretty clear. They redacted some mock ups of what the bills would look like. There's other, you know, information that they redacted that they that they say is deliberative process like advice, you know, discussion, internal discussion. about the project. I also believe that it reveals more about the tensions that, I say tension, but the pullback by BEP on this, because ultimately, Patricia Solomine, who headed that agency, what the Washington Post reported is that last year, when there was discussions and an effort to put or to place Trump's image on a$250 bill to commemorate the 250th anniversary, she pushed back saying that there were legal questions and that normally printing money and designing the plates takes years.

8:53So that's when she was abruptly reassigned. So I feel like there's more to be revealed behind the scenes. But as it stands right now, I mean, this is, you know, a glimpse into that behind the curtain into what was happening. Going back to the security concerns, you note, too, that a separate email sent by another BEP official to Solomon said because of a No Kings rally on March 28th, they plan to send a special message to the BEP police force to be vigilant this weekend. I mean, it talks about going back to that, as you said, like the security concerns. I guess that was pretty real. Yeah. Yeah.

9:34And I mean, they obviously take that seriously. Yeah. And it just kind of underscores. I mean, I want to just break this down for five seconds. It underscores how this doesn't often happen, if at all. And here we are, you know, where you're in some sense kind of politicizing money and all hell is breaking loose. Right. the point where they've got to have police you know being vigilant over the weekend because of an announcement right and as you write historically the currency has included the signatures of the treasurer of the united states and the treasury secretary but but not a president and of course like changing the photo you could that would be a big deal that's not on the table anymore And Trump's name will replace the treasurer.

10:30So the way it's sort of mocked up as it currently stands is it's the secretary of the treasury and then the president, not necessarily in that order. You know, it's kind of interesting. I'm thinking, Jason, on a day where we saw Supreme Court Justice John Roberts basically stay and make it possible for President Trump to continue with his ballroom building it. There's still another measure to go in terms of the other Supreme Court justices. But it's just interesting. We were talking earlier on Bloomberg just about, as you also say, you've got a president who is looking to kind of make his mark and put his name on just so much, whether it's in D.C.

11:12or on something like a U.S. currency. Well, I can tell you that we'll be having a discussion about the ballroom documents down the road. So I'm looking forward to that one. It's interesting. See, this is why we love you. What are the other things that are on your radar right now? We've just got a couple of minutes to go. Yeah, a couple of things on my radar is one is it's going back to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration is doing interviews with the FBI agents or people involved in that. I've got documents that will kind of lay bare what was happening behind the scenes at the very beginning of that investigation and may shed a little bit more light as to why the Trump administration is so interested.

12:12I love this. Hey, I wonder too, are you thinking, like watching very closely what happens in the midterms and what it might mean for your world in terms of accessing documents? Absolutely. I'm watching that so closely. And I have to end by saying that, you know, for the first time, we have our first FOIA felony. What? Anthony Fauci. Yes. Anthony Fauci's former advisor, you know, top official at the Institute for Allergy. And forgive me, I can't finish it. And I AID. Yeah. David Morin's pled guilty to charges of conspiracy related to efforts to evade the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Records Act.

13:03That's the first time that, again, that anyone has been convicted for a FOIA related crime. That is crazy. I don't even know how to like put that into context. It just seems, I mean, we talk, right? Yeah. Yeah. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I have to correct myself there. So that's where, you know, that's where he works. So, I mean, there's a lot happening in FOIA land. Oh yeah, it doesn't sleep. Listen, I point to you and kind of bringing it to something we talk about regularly. And you think about, there's a lot of information out there. You got to put in the request.

13:45You got to do the work. You have to be patient. And then you have to read the FOIA Files newsletter. I'm just going to put it out there. Thank you, Carol. Jason, take care. Thank you both. Talk to you soon. Jason LePol, Bloomberg News Senior Investigative Reporter, author of the FOIA Files newsletter. You can get that at Bloomberg.com slash newsletters. He also hosts the podcast Disclosure.

14:06Jason Leopold:When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, risk can affect multiple parts of the organization at once, from property and liability to cyber and regulatory challenges. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline. At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation.

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