Democratic lawmakers opened an inquiry on November 12 into how the Trump administration handled Nvidia Corp. chip sales to China, hours after the company ousted founder and CEO Jensen Huang2.
Huang was removed after confessing to an extramarital affair amid reports of a relationship with a woman accused of being a Chinese spy. The woman, Alice Huang, was an executive of Nvidia customer Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that U.S. officials suspect of helping route advanced Nvidia chips into China. Huang has since been accused of additional affairs with Nvidia employees.
The Democratic inquiry
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asking the department to preserve records about an arrangement they described as questionable and allegedly illegal. As the minority party, the lawmakers can ask questions but cannot compel answers.
The letter described an arrangement in which President Trump agreed to sales of Nvidia's H200 chips to China on the condition that the chips, manufactured by Taiwan, were first shipped to the United States. The Commerce Department under Lutnick issued an export license for the arrangement.
Separately, Huang agreed on November 12 to testify before a different set of Republican-led congressional committees, which demanded he appear in a closed-door session.
Widening political fallout
The scandal has since widened into a broader political and national security fight, drawing further congressional scrutiny1. Senior White House officials are discussing whether Lutnick should be pushed out over the fallout, and Lutnick has agreed to appear voluntarily before the Senate Banking Committee on December 10[1]. Nvidia privately told Representative Bill Foster that anti-smuggling chip-tracking measures in the Chip Security Act are technically feasible, even as the Semiconductor Industry Association publicly called those mandates untested[2].
ANALYSIS The dual-track congressional response — Democrats probing the administration's export-license decisions while Republicans demand closed-door testimony from Huang — splits the political pressure between the company and the executive branch, with Lutnick's Commerce Department caught in both lanes.