It’s time to add yet another instance of blatant insider trading to the Trump administration’s record.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 and $5 million of her share in Trump Media on April 2, the same day the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff war announcement broke the stock market, according to reporting from ProPublica. Trump Media stocks specifically fell 13 percent that day.
While it’s hard to confirm exactly what time Bondi sold the stocks, or what she knew beforehand, this type of behavior is par for the course for a president who has been fairly careless about conflict of interest when it comes to his relentless stock market manipulation. Remember that Trump later posted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” on Truth Social a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, an announcement that caused the market to shoot up into the green.
Insider trading is a blatantly illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself or your friends a market advantage. Someone with knowledge of a major economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would sell their stocks if they knew a huge drop was coming, which is likely exactly what Bondi did in this situation—a classic pump and dump.
Bondi’s Justice Department has yet to comment.