Senator Gallego: “Trump just showed us a master class in insider trading. This is corruption at the highest level.”
WASHINGTON – Yesterday, Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded answers about possible violations of federal ethics and insider trading laws tied to President Trump’s sudden change in tariff policy. Today, Senator Gallego also called on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch an investigation into whether Trump, his family, or insiders like Elon Musk were tipped off ahead of the President’s surprise decision to pause some of his steep, across-the-board tariffs.
That announcement triggered a stock market surge that gave $304 billion to the world’s richest people in a single day — including $36 billion to Elon Musk, whose Tesla stock climbed 18% following the announcement. The same day, Trump hosted powerful Wall Street executives in the Oval Office and bragged about the fortunes they made just one hour after his announcement.
Meanwhile, Trump’s on-again-off-again trade rollercoaster is already halting manufacturing business expansions, hurting workers, and raising prices for working families.
See coverage below.
On the Airwaves
Senator Gallego: “The reason this matters is because they are profiting off inside information and in that process, they are screwing every day American workers. These small businesses that have small holdings, these IRAs, all these companies that are not privy to this inside information, they’re the ones that are actually not getting the benefit. […] This will end up hurting middle America, Mainstreet America, it’s going to grind our economy to a halt, there’s going to be [more] layoffs. But of course, the rich got richer as usual when it comes to these kinds of calamities because they took advantage of the situation, and it looks like it came from the inside.”
Senator Gallego: “This is wrong. No matter who you are, whether you’re a senator, whether you’re a Congressman, [or] whether you are in the White House, you do not have a right to really mess with the system essentially at the cost of working class Americans who are just trying to save a little for retirement, maybe save a little more to buy a house.”
Reporter: “The markets stumbled after the opening bell yesterday until President Trump announced he was rolling back most of his tariffs to 10%. Hours before Trump’s tariff reversal kicked off a rally on Wall Street, he posted on his social media platform that everything would work out and that this is a great time to buy. The market rally led Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego and California Senator Adam Schiff to question if the president or anyone connected to him illegally profited from insider information. ‘This sequence of events raises grave legal and ethics concerns. ‘The president, his family, and his advisers are uniquely positioned to be privy to and take advantage of non-public information to inform their investment decisions,’ the senators wrote in their letter to the administration.”
In Print
NOTUS: Democrats Accuse Trump and His Allies of Profiting Off of Tariff Flip
[Tinashe Chingarande, 4/10/25]
“It happened in front of our eyes,” Sen. Ruben Gallego told NOTUS. “This hurt the economy in the end. People on Main Street are going to see the slowdown [of] the economy. You’re going to have layoffs happening. You’re going to have higher costs.”
Gallego and Sen. Adam Schiff sent a letter Thursday to the White House chief of staff and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics requesting an “urgent inquiry” into whether Trump, his family and other members of his administration engaged in “illegal financial transactions informed by advanced knowledge of non-public information regarding his changes to tariff policy.”
The Hill: Democratic senators question possible insider trading on Trump tariff pause
[Alexander Bolton, 4/10/25]
Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) are demanding that the Office of Government Ethics investigate what they say are potential conflicts of interest of White House and executive branch officials who may have made financial transactions with insider knowledge of President Trump’s 90-day pause on steep tariffs. […]
Schiff and Gallego note that Trump posted on Truth Social at 9:33 a.m. EDT Wednesday: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well.” They add that Trump then posted a few minutes later: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” […]
Schiff and Gallego asked White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Jamieson Greer, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, in a Thursday letter to conduct an inquiry into whether Trump or members of his family and administration “engaged in insider trading or other illegal financial transactions informed by the advance knowledge of non-public information regarding his changes to tariff policy.” […]
Schiff and Gallego want the government ethics office to review and produce any periodic transaction reports filed by any government officials in proximity to the president’s Wednesday tariff announcement.
See more:
- ABC: Democratic senators call for probe into possible insider trading over Trump tariff reversal[Isabella Murray, Ivan Pereira, and Allison Pecorin, 4/11/25]
- Arizona Republic: Kari Lake, Sen. Ruben Gallego skirmish over stock trades[Ron Hansen, 4/10/25]
- Axios: “Market manipulation”: Democrats scrutinize Trump’s posts before tariff retreat[Avery Lotz, 4/10/25]
- MSNBC Katy Tur Reports[4/10/25]
- Cronkite News: Democrats say Trump insiders may have profited off market turmoil triggered by launch, abrupt pause on tariffs[Matthew DeWees, 4/10/25]
- Time: Adam Schiff Calls For Insider Trading Investigation into Trump Over Tariff Pause [Nik Popil, 4/10/25]
- NPR: Why some are accusing Trump of manipulating stock markets [Maria Aspen, 4/10/25]