FOIAengine: Latest Media Requests Include $TRUMP
Chase Herro, a self-proclaimed “dirtbag of the internet,” is a fast-talking serial entrepreneur and dealmaker with a colorful backstory and a lot of legal baggage, as recounted last year in a Bloomberg feature: “Weed. Weight-loss colon cleanses. A $149-a-month get-rich-quick class.”
Oh, yeah – and jail. Four years ago, Herro – who also goes by “Chase Hero” – bragged about his dissolute past to crypto cowboy and WWE showman Logal Paul in a podcast segment titled “What Was Jail Like?” Herro not only spoke from experience but, in true bro fashion, also made it sound fun.
Eventually, Herro’s own get-rich-quick road led to cryptocurrency and the Trump family business, but not before Herro seemingly burned the bridge ahead of him (or got himself on the radar of MAGA world, take your pick) in a now-deleted 2018 You Tube video.
Herro produced the crypto video (audio is still available here) while driving in a Rolls-Royce; he was fond of showing off his private-jet rides and fancy cars on social media. Here’s what he said back then about cryptoworld:
“This space is run by a bunch of middle-aged men, you know, like, the mid-30-year-old men who understand the power of social media. And you can literally sell sh** in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin for $1 billion if the story is right – because people will buy it. And that is what is going on in the crypto space.”
That was then. The crypto world certainly looks a lot different to Herro today. He’s the co-founder of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture launched in 2024 with significant involvement from President Donald Trump and all three of his sons – including 19-year-old Barron, who is the company’s “DeFi visionary.”
World Liberty Financial represents one of two distinct strategies for the Trump family to profit from cryptocurrency initiatives. It’s separate from the family’s involvement in the $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins, which have reportedly earned the Trumps at least $320 million from trading fees.
According to a May 20 report, World Liberty has already pushed out over $550 million worth of tokens. Of that, Herro and a partner, Zak Folkman (who previously ran a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC, selling books and seminars aimed at teaching men how to attract women), collected at least $65 million, while the Trump family reportedly received an additional $400 million on top of the hundreds of millions from $TRUMP and $MELANIA.
Which brings us to this week’s story, and an intriguing Freedom of Information Act request from Reuters, which has spent considerable resources chasing the Chase Herro story.
As transparency laws face pressure, Reuters is one of a handful of financial news giants keeping busy with FOIA requests. Among traditional news outlets, Reuters (33 requests) and Bloomberg (14 requests) predominated in the media FOIA requests we logged from federal agencies during the past month.
Today’s rundown includes highlights from those Reuters and Bloomberg requests. Next week, we’ll take a closer look at Capitol Forum, which specializes in high-impact antitrust and regulatory investigations. Capitol Forum led the media category this month with 38 requests for documents that, in some cases, reach as far back as a decade ago.
We’ll begin with Herro and the Reuters request. First, some background.
The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial operates as what’s known as a decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, providing banking-like services for cryptocurrency holders but without the regulatory strictures of a traditional bank. Customers can borrow against their cryptocurrency assets and earn interest without needing intermediaries like banks.
Through World Liberty Financial, the Trump family thus generates revenue in some of the same ways that a traditional bank does – by charging fees and interest. Another big revenue stream comes from selling World Liberty’s native token, $WLFI. Sales of $WLFI enabled the Trump family to quickly bring in $400 million. On top of that, Herro and Folkman got a share of the loot, too, pulling down a fast $65 million.
Initially, Herro and Folkman were listed as the sole directors and members of World Liberty Financial. However, in January 2025, control of World Liberty shifted to WLF Holdco LLC, an entity in which the Trump family holds a 60 percent stake. This restructuring effectively replaced Herro and Folkman as the controlling parties of the platform.
Despite the Trump family’s taking control of World Liberty Financial, Herro remains involved in its operation. He is a co-owner, with Folkman, of Axiom Management Group, reportedly a Puerto Rico-based limited liability company that gets a net 12.5 percent cut of World Liberty’s revenue.
Into this dizzying tangle of companies stepped Reuters’ Lawrence Delevingne. In an April 25 request to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Delevingne sought “Tips, Complaints and Referrals (TCRs) related to Pacer Capital LLC and its manager Chase T. Herro, who also goes by Chase Hero.”
Delevingne is reaching back pretty far to see what else the SEC might have on the Trump family’s roguish crypto partner. Herro founded now-defunct Pacer Capital in 2014. The firm focused heavily on cryptocurrency trading and was part of Herro’s early ventures into the crypto space. After Pacer Capital, Herro started a DeFi platform called Dough Capital. A $2.1 million hack led to its shutdown and civil fraud litigation in Miami federal court, with a trial is set to begin next April 20.
So far, we haven’t seen any new reporting from Reuters on these early chapters in Herro’s crypto journey.
Other media requests: According to PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows, Reuters, Bloomberg, and Capitol Forum accounted for one out of every five FOIA queries recently made to the 41 federal departments and agencies that we regularly monitor – an unusually high ratio. Their FOIA requests ranged widely across agencies and topics – and also surfaced some interesting trends. Highlights follow.
Reuters’ Madeline Tranquillo submitted a cluster of requests with the SEC for all filings submitted by a network of related entities: Wafra Inc., Wafra Advisors LLC, Wafra Holdings Inc., Wraif II GP LLC, Wraif I GP LP, Wafra AID LLC, Wafra Partners LP, Intervest Capital Partners Inc., Wafra Acquisition Fund, Wafra Securities Corporation, Wafra Venture Partners Inc. I and II, and 345 WPGP LLC.
New York-based Wafra is a Kuwait-government-backed investment firm involved in private equity and asset management. According to Wafra’s most recent SEC filing, dated March 27, the firm has $27 billion under management. Wafra’s SEC filing lists no criminal, civil, or regulatory actions.
FOIA requests to the federal government can be an important early warning of bad publicity, litigation to come, or uncertainties to be hedged and gamed out. In this case, Reuters may be investigating Wafra’s potential regulatory issues, undeclared holdings, or international investment flows. Whatever the focus, the volume of requests focused on various Wafra affiliates suggests a significant reporting project.
Christine Prentice, who covers securities enforcement for Reuters, requested “emails sent from Robin Andrews, in the San Francisco office, to the SEC Commissioners, and any of their staff on Thursday and Friday, April 3, and 4, 2025.”
This request has an interesting backdrop. Andrews was a highly visible enforcement attorney at the SEC whose courtroom targets included Elon Musk, whom Andrews criticized in 2024 for failing to appear for scheduled testimony. At the time, Andrews described Musk’s behavior as “gamesmanship.”
Andrews posted a month ago on LinkedIn that he was quitting after nearly two decades at the agency, following “weeks of excruciating deliberation.” Andrews wrote: “This is a heartbreaking day for me.” So far, we haven’t clocked a Reuters follow-up story.
Ben Miller of Bloomberg Law sought “a schedule of Paul Atkins activities for his first week (including all available weeks going forward) after being sworn in as Chair of the SEC.”
Bloomberg’s White House and politics correspondent, Gregory Korte, asked the Department of Transportation on April 30 for “all monthly hiring reports submitted by the DOGE team lead to the United States DOGE Service (USDS) Administrator under Section 3(b)(iii) of Executive Order 14210, ‘Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,’ from February 11, 2025 through the date of search.” Korte made a similar request, on the same day, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and to the SEC one day prior.
Frequent Bloomberg requester Jason Leopold sought from the SEC “email records including attachments) sent and received by concerning Acting Chairman Mark T. Uyeda from January 20, 2025 to date of search.”
Next week, we’ll dig into some interesting FOIA requests from, and about, Capitol Forum.
FOIAengine access now is available for all professional members of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of journalism. IRE is the world’s oldest and largest association of investigative journalists. Following the federal government’s shutdown of FOIAonline.gov last year, FOIAengine is the only source for the most comprehensive, fully searchable archive of FOIA requests across dozens of federal departments and agencies. FOIAengine has more robust functionality and searching capabilities, and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. PoliScio Analytics is proud to be partnering with IRE to provide this valuable content to investigative reporters worldwide.
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Next: Spy vs. Spy: The private investigator tracking Capitol Forum.
John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis. His most recent book is The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist. Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013. Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller. Learn more about FOIAengine here. To review FOIA requests mentioned in this article, subscribe to FOIAengine.
Write to John A. Jenkins at JAJ@PoliScio.com.
