FINRA halted MMTLP under Gensler’s SEC, blocking planned exits and leaving investors without the records and reconciliation Congress demanded. Paul Atkins can provide the accounting.Gary Gensler spent much of his career where money, political power, and federal regulation meet: nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, senior Treasury posts under Bill Clinton, leadership of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Barack Obama, and the role of chief financial officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.Joe Biden then put him in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission.That history does not prove Gensler personally ordered the December 2022 trading halt in MMTLP or directed improper treatment of Trump Media’s DJT shares. It does make transparency essential.Gensler held positions of financial and regulatory power while controversies involving political accountability, market integrity, and accurate public records unfolded. The records should show whether the rules were applied equally.From Clinton Campaign CFO to SEC ChairmanGensler’s MIT biography identifies him as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign CFO. During that campaign, Hillary for America paid Perkins Coie $175,000 for opposition research that led to the Steele dossier but reported the expense as “legal services.”The DNC paid the firm another $849,407.97, largely described as legal and compliance consulting.The Federal Election Commission later found probable cause to believe the campaign and DNC misreported the payments’ purpose. Hillary for America paid an $8,000 civil penalty and the DNC paid $105,000, without admitting liability.The FEC identified campaign treasurer Elizabeth Jones – not Gensler – as the responsible official and did not establish that Gensler knew the downstream vendors. But a basic question remains: What did the campaign CFO know about the payments and their reporting?Gensler became SEC chairman in April 2021, promising to protect investors and maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets. The MMTLP story would test that promise.The MMTLP HaltMMTLP grew out of the 2021 merger of Torchlight Energy Resources and Meta Materials. Torchlight shareholders received preferred shares tied to oil and gas assets later transferred to Next Bridge Hydrocarbons.Although the issuer did not intend those shares to trade, MMTLP began trading over the counter in October 2021. Investors questioned how a special-dividend security became publicly quoted without the issuer seeking a market for it.In late 2022, Meta Materials prepared to spin Next Bridge into an independent company. Holders of settled MMTLP positions on December 12 were to receive one Next Bridge share for each MMTLP share. The distribution was scheduled for December 14, when MMTLP would be canceled.Then the timeline tightened. On December 5, a FINRA email later made public said the MMAT and MMTLP matter had reached the regulator’s fraud team, which was examining the issuers from a “fraud and manipulation angle” and “bluesheeting both MMAT and MMTLP.”FINRA issued a corporate-action notice on December 6 and revised it on December 8. Before the market opened on December 9, FINRA invoked Rule 6440(a)(3) and imposed a U3 halt.Investors who expected to sell on December 9 or December 12 lost that opportunity. Their positions moved into Next Bridge, whose shares had no established public market.The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service later confirmed that the halt’s timing prevented some investors from exiting as planned.FINRA says it acted because of settlement concerns, not short positions. It later estimated that about 2.65 million MMTLP shares were held short on December 12—roughly 1.6 percent of shares outstanding – and reported no evidence of significant naked short selling.According to FINRA, open short positions became equivalent to Next Bridge positions. Investors and members of Congress have continued to seek the underlying records needed to test those conclusions.The Records Regulators Still Have Not ReleasedElectronic Blue Sheets can show which accounts traded, when they traded, and the size and direction of transactions. FINRA correctly notes that Blue Sheets alone cannot identify every beneficial owner or produce a complete share count.But combined with broker, transfer-agent, clearing and short-interest records, they could help reconstruct the market before trading stopped. What did FINRA’s fraud team see, who reviewed it, and did the SEC receive the results before the halt?In December 2023, 74 members of Congress including then senators JD Vance and Mike Crapo, sent a bipartisan letter to Gensler and FINRA CEO Robert Cook.Lawmakers said their offices had received more than 40,000 letters from concerned investors. They asked who knew about the halt in advance, whether Blue Sheets had been requested, whether every investor received the correct Next Bridge shares, and whether regulators found evidence of fraud, manipulation, illegal naked shorting, counterfeit shares or insider trading.Congress also requested unredacted communications among FINRA, the SEC, government agencies and market participants – plus a certified, audited and consolidated count of long positions, short positions, IOUs and other MMTLP holdings at domestic and foreign institutions as of December 12, 2022. The public still has not received that full accounting.Industry Emails Raised More QuestionsFOIA records published by the MMTLP Action Hub show that the Financial Information Forum, an industry group representing broker-dealers, exchanges and market centers, contacted senior SEC officials in 2023 about a proposed Next Bridge subscription-rights offering.The proposal could have moved shares from brokerage accounts to the transfer agent, potentially allowing broker-recorded positions to be compared with registered shares.FIF warned that, because of the FINRA halt, some shares remained on loan that broker-dealers could not recover. It also said lending firms might be unable to recover shares or equivalent warrants for customers if the SEC allowed the offering to proceed as proposed.The emails do not prove that firms created counterfeit shares, violated short-sale rules or improperly influenced the SEC. They do show that industry representatives privately raised concerns about unrecoverable loaned shares while investors were demanding a complete accounting.The SEC was not a bystander. FINRA imposed the halt, but it operates under SEC oversight. Gensler’s SEC processed the Next Bridge registration before the halt, communicated with FINRA investigators, met with FIF representatives afterward and asked Next Bridge to withdraw the subscription-rights registration.Yet investors encountered redactions and delays when seeking the records. An August 2025 SEC email said one FOIA request involving 56,490 emails and 35 narrowed responses remained in the agency’s complex queue.For the first time, Next Bridge Hydrocarbons CEO Greg McCabe will speak publicly on an X Space call co-hosted by award winning journalist, Lara Logan, Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 6pm ET.This will be followed by an exclusive interview on September 25, 2026, on “Going Rogue” with Logan, where he will discuss at length about the MMTLP controversy.McCabe’s account adds the issuer’s perspective to a record that already includes FINRA’s explanations, SEC and FIF communications, congressional demands, thousands of investor complaints and he will be naming names.Then Came DJTTrump Media began trading on Nasdaq as DJT in March 2024. The next month, the company notified Nasdaq of suspected manipulation and possible naked short selling.It said four firms accounted for more than 60 percent of trading volume and asked Nasdaq to preserve records and investigate. Trump Media later told Congress that failures to deliver exceeded one million shares on seven of ten trading days from May 1 through May 15.Failures to deliver and placement on a Regulation SHO threshold list do not, by themselves, prove illegal naked short selling. They are warning signs that can justify examination.There is no public evidence that Gensler directed an attack on DJT or told the SEC to ignore Trump Media’s complaints. But his political history makes the equal-enforcement question impossible to dismiss. Was the SEC merely ineffective, or did politically connected institutions receive different treatment?Paul Atkins Can Provide the AccountingGensler left the SEC in January 2025. Paul Atkins, President Trump’s choice to lead the agency, was sworn in three months later. The change in leadership did not erase the records – or the government’s duty to account for what happened.Grassroots leaders and investor advocates, including U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jaime Garcia (@busybrands) and veteran advocate Sean George (@beardVet), have formally contacted White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.Their demand letter urges President Trump to press for a full forensic accounting, complete regulatory transparency and federal action on the unresolved MMTLP matter.The administration can press the SEC to review its handling of MMTLP and explain its communications with FINRA and FIF.The agency can provide confidential records to Congress with appropriate protections; federal law states that securities-confidentiality provisions do not authorize the SEC to withhold information from Congress.Atkins’s SEC can release everything the law permits, provide Congress with the Electronic Blue Sheets or an equivalent forensic reconstruction, and publish aggregate share totals without exposing investors’ personal information.It can answer the questions that have persisted for years: Who knew the halt was coming? What did the fraud investigation uncover? How many shares, loans, short positions and other obligations existed when trading stopped? Why were the complete communications and reconciled totals never released?Gary Gensler led the SEC when those answers were due. Paul Atkins now holds the authority to obtain them. The American public is still waiting.The post WHAT DID GENSLER’S SEC HIDE? The former Clinton Campaign CFO Faces New Scrutiny as Trump’s SEC Chairman Holds the Key appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.