SEC Leadership Faces Questions Over Ryan’s Resignation
Democratic legislators want SEC Chair Paul Atkins to answer questions about the recent abrupt resignation of Enforcement Division Director Judge Margaret Ryan after news reports that she clashed with Atkins and other agency leadership over how to handle certain cases involving associates of President Donald Trump.
This week, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, wrote Atkins to express “serious concern” about Ryan’s departure last month.
Waters’ letter cited Reuters reporting indicating that Judge Ryan had “clashed with agency leadership” over the enforcement program, including cases tied to Trump.
According to Reuters, Ryan wanted to be more “aggressive in pursuing charges for fraud and other misconduct,” including in cases like those against Justin Sun and Elon Musk, who both have ties to Trump or his family, but she “faced resistance” from Atkins and others at the commission.
“The American people deserve to know whether the SEC will protect them in the securities markets, regardless of the source,” Waters wrote in the letter.
The SEC declined to comment for this story.
Judge Margaret “Meg” Ryan was appointed by Atkins to run the agency’s Enforcement Division starting Sept. 2 of last year. Before joining the SEC, Ryan served as an active-duty U.S. Marine Corps communications officer during deployments to the Philippines and the Gulf War, and previously served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
Ryan was expected to bring a steady hand to the agency’s enforcement efforts amid what Atkins has called a “necessary course correction” from what he argues was a misguided approach during the tenure of prior Chair Gary Gensler under the Biden administration. But Ryan entered the role amid an allegedly demoralized workforce following budget cuts and staff reductions, some of which were carried out by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative (conducted while the agency had an open case against Musk).
Ryan abruptly resigned on March 16, only six months after taking on the role, noting in a statement that she “did not seek the role of the Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement … rather, this role found me.” The SEC’s statement did not give a reason for her departure.
Waters’ request comes a week after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member on the Senate Banking Committee, wrote her own letter to Atkins about Ryan’s resignation. She called her departure “deeply troubling,” saying it “calls into question the Commission’s ability to effectively protect investors and the markets.”
Among the cases Warren cited was Justin Sun, who was accused of manipulative trading to boost unregistered crypto asset securities. In 2023, the SEC charged him with selling unregistered securities while recruiting celebrities to tout the crypto assets.
In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Sun went “above and beyond to funnel money to the Trump family crypto business,” according to a separate letter from Waters to Atkins earlier this year.
Sun allegedly invested at least $75 million in the Trump family-backed crypto, World Liberty Financial (while serving as an advisor), and became the top purchaser of the $TRUMP token.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration in February 2025, the SEC moved to pause the case against Sun, in contradiction to previous SEC staff recommendations.
According to Waters, the conduct in Sun’s case, as well as dismissals of other crypto-related cases involving defendants who’d contributed money to Trump’s inauguration, “has created the unmistakable inference of a pay-to-play scheme.”
Both Waters and Warren requested that Atkins and the agency explain Ryan’s resignation and “preserve and produce” memoranda, meeting notes and other correspondence between Ryan, her staff and commissioners relating to disagreements about cases.
Earlier this week, the commission announced that Gibson Dunn Partner David Woodcock would take over leadership of the Enforcement Division starting in May. Woodcock previously served as the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office Director between 2011 and 2015.
The agency also belatedly released its Fiscal Year 2025 overview this week, showing that the total number of enforcement actions dropped year over year, a decline the commission attributed to the Biden administration’s alleged attempt to “pursue media headlines and run up numbers.”