Pam Bondi Sold Over $1M in Shares The Same Day Trump Tariffs Were Announced
Source: Newsweek
Published May 15, 2025 at 3:33 AM EDT | Updated May 15, 2025 at 7:28 AM EDT
Attorney General Pam Bondi sold more than $1 million worth of shares the day President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
According to financial disclosures first reported by ProPublica and seen by Newsweek, Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares in Trump's social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, on April 2. Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice by website form for comment outside normal business hours.
Why It Matters
On April 2, which Trump dubbed "Liberation Day," the president announced tariffs on countries all over the world, causing stock markets to plummet. Along with a 10 percent "baseline" tariff on almost all imported goods, Trump introduced "reciprocal" tariffs on some trading partners, such as 20 percent on the European Union and 26 percent on India.
One week later, following the markets' negative reaction, Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs while maintaining the baseline rate. On his Truth Social platform, hours before announcing the pause in tariffs, Trump wrote: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT." The moves have garnered criticism, with some Democrats accusing the president of market manipulation, though there is no evidence to support this claim.
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/pam-bondi-sold-shares-trump-media-same-day-tariffs-announced-2072543
= new reply since forum marked as read
Just more insider trading.
It had been in the news even before Chump's inaugural, so I'm not sure how much "insider trading" can be pinned on Blondie.
On the other hand, shouldn't all of her stocks and financial holdings have been placed in a blind trust while she serves as the Attorney General?
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of Bondi.
Trump's tariffs were announced after the markets closed, and the disclosure form does not say whether the shares were sold before or after closing time.
The disclosure forms also do not specify the value of the stocks sold, only a range.
. . .
According to CBS News, the day after the sale, Trump Media's stock dropped by more than 10 percent.
I added the ROFL emoji. If they were sold before the market closed, i.e. before the tariffs announcement, then there is a pretty strong reason to suspect. If she sold after the close, then she was acting on information that anyone reading the news had.
There's a comment upstream that it was known since before the inaugural that tRump was going to raise tariffs ... yes indeedy, but the timing is still important -- she avoided a more than 10% drop the next day. And the market doesn't seem to be all that allergic to tariffs -- there were Trump II era tariffs already well before April 2. And the market (S&P 500) is up 2.1% over its election day level and up 0.4% YTD as I post this 15 minutes before the close, so some level of tariffs is not a market-killer. The size of the tariffs is important and the size of the April 2 jump in tariffs announcement surprised pretty much all the financial pundits.
Myself, I didn't leap out of the market when tRump started putting on tariffs months ago, and threatening more. Nor did I leap out of the market on or after April 2. Rather, I continued to maintain the same allocation between equities and fixed income that I maintained before the election.
