- Senators Gallego and Schiff requested an ethics investigation into potential insider trading by the Trump administration related to a tariff reversal.
- The White House and Kari Lake dismissed the request as a partisan attack.
- The investigation request followed unusual stock market activity, particularly a surge in Tesla stock.
The White House and Kari Lake lashed out at Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, for calling for an ethics investigation of whether there was possible insider trading violations ahead of President Donald Trump’s reversal on most tariffs.
An April 10 letter Gallego, D-Ariz., signed with Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., questioned whether Trump, his family or staff profited from the investing rebound on April 9, when Trump said he would temporarily suspend most of the tariffs he instituted a week earlier.
The letter helped rekindle some of the past acrimony involving Lake and Gallego and Schiff and Trump and sent the left and right into their familiar corners as the world’s financial markets continue to reel.
Trump’s tariff U-turn on April 9 sparked an instant, though short-lived, rally in financial markets and some investing watchdogs have pointed to signs of potentially suspicious stock purchases ahead of the announced rollback.
“This sequence of events raises grave legal and ethics concerns,” the Schiff-Gallego letter said. “The President, his family, and his advisors are uniquely positioned to be privy to and take advantage of non-public information to inform their investment decisions.”
It cited an 18% sudden jump in the stock of Tesla, the electric auto company owned by Trump’s billionaire adviser, Elon Musk, who had publicly opposed Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
Hours after the letter, Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, told Fox News the letter was a sign that Democrats are “playing partisan games instead of celebrating President Trump’s decisive action yesterday to finally corner China.”
Lake, Gallego’s former political rival, added her voice to the skirmish.
“Imagine my complete lack of surprise seeing that (Gallego) co-authored Adam Schiff’s latest hoax,” in a social media post alluding to Schiff’s work leading the first impeachment trial against Trump.
“Two partisan nut jobs wasting valuable time & resources trying to launch another witchhunt meant to undermine the good work this administration is doing,” Lake wrote. She called both Democrats “radical Marxists.”
Tremors in financial markets worldwide have moved in line with Trump’s chaotic tariff pronouncements.
Markets tumbled after his April 2 “Liberation Day” remarks outlining tariff increases that hit 185 countries tied to U.S. trade balances. Markets, including those for oil and the normally ultra-safe U.S. treasury bonds, sank for a week before Trump relented on April 9.
That’s when he said most of the tariffs would be suspended for 90 days, but his tariff hike on China went even higher.
The announcement reversed markets for a day, before investor pessimism over the state of international trade reverted to another sell-off on April 10.
Schiff and Gallego, as well as other Democrats, notably including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have reacted warily to the April 9 investing spike.
That morning, Trump posted a social media message telling the public to “Be cool! Everything is going to work out well.”
Hours later, he said he would pause most of his tariffs.
Desai described such messaging as part of the president’s job.
“It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering,” he told Fox News.
Schiff and Gallego saw it differently. They asked the Office of Government Ethics to review the timing of the disclosure of the forthcoming tariff reversal and preserve records relating to that matter.
Unusual Whales, a website that tracks investing news and trends, including trades involving members of Congress, has noted “an absolute flurry of insanely timed trades.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who has stoked left-leaning populism, including in a recent swing through Arizona, added to the sense of skepticism among many Democrats.
“Any member of Congress who purchased stock in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now,” she wrote on social media. “I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor. … It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”
Calls for financial reforms involving members of Congress have alternately found support on the left and the right….
Read More: Kari Lake, Sen. Ruben Gallego skirmish over stock trades