Administration Insiders Might Be Illegally Making Billions on Massive Iran War Insider Trading Without Fear of Being Investigated

It has long been speculated that Trump insiders are using advance knowledge of his chaotic decisions to make huge amounts of money from stock market fluctuations as he imposes, lifts, and reimposes tariffs. Now it looks like they’re doing the same thing in a grimmer context, trading off of Trump’s ever-changing pronouncements about his war with Iran.

CNBC reports on the suspicious pattern:

S&P 500 futures and oil futures flashed an unusual burst of activity early Monday minutes before a market-moving social media post from President Donald Trump.

At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume, breaking from an otherwise subdued premarket backdrop. With thin liquidity typical of early trading hours, the sudden burst stood out as one of the largest volume moments of the session up to that point.

A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading activity at roughly the same time, with a distinct volume spike interrupting otherwise quiet conditions.

Roughly 15 minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., Trump said on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held talks and that he was halting planned strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. That announcement prompted an instant rally in risk assets, with S&P 500 futures soaring more than 2.5% before the opening bell. West Texas Intermediate futures dropped nearly 6% following the announcement.

The timing of the earlier volume spikes across both equities and crude caught the attention of traders, particularly given the absence of an obvious catalyst at the moment they occurred.

What is perhaps even worse than the fact that insiders are making money off of matters of life and death for men and women in uniform is that none of this has a prayer of being investigated by Donald Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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