"Grave Concerns": Senators Demand Probe into Potential Trump Market Manipulation After "BUY!" Post

Let's quickly recap the head-spinning events of Wednesday, April 9th, because context is everything here. The day started with markets continuing to reel from President Trump's massive "Liberation Day" tariff announcements. Then, around 9:30 a.m. Eastern, amidst the turmoil his administration created, Trump posts on Truth Social: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT". Fast forward less than four hours, after 1:15 p.m. ET, and Trump announces also via Truth Social a sudden 90-day pause on most of those very tariffs, sending stocks soaring and clawing back trillions in lost value by the closing bell.

The timing was, shall we say, suspicious. So suspicious, in fact, that it couldn't be ignored. Today, Thursday, April 10th, prominent Democratic senators are formally demanding investigations into whether this sequence constitutes illegal market manipulation or insider trading by the President, his family, or administration insiders.

According to UPI and AP News reports, Senators like Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are pointing directly at the timeline and raising hell. Schiff and Gallego sent a letter to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the White House Chief of Staff citing "grave legal and ethics concerns." They are demanding answers by April 18th to pointed questions, including whether anyone in the administration (specifically naming advisor Elon Musk), Trump's family, or Trump himself knew the tariff pause was coming before it was announced, and crucially, whether any of them traded stocks based on that non-public knowledge.

As Senator Murphy (D-Conn.) put it bluntly on X yesterday, "An insider trading scandal is brewing."

And why wouldn't they be suspicious? As the AP reported, investors who actually followed Trump's conveniently timed "BUY!!!" advice Wednesday morning likely "made a lot of money" when the market rocketed up that afternoon following his pause announcement. Adding another layer of eyebrow-raising coincidence, shares in Trump's own Trump Media (DJT) – which he intermittently plugs with his initials – reportedly soared 22% that day, netting the trust controlled by his son, Don Jr., a paper gain of around $415 million. (Yes, you read that right).

Now, let's be clear: we don't have concrete proof of illegal trades based on non-public information... yet. But the appearance is absolutely damning. The President of the United States possesses the ultimate insider knowledge about his own administration's market-moving decisions. To publicly encourage buying stocks hours before announcing a policy likely to cause a significant rally looks like either incomprehensibly reckless behavior or a deliberate signal. Either way, it raises fundamental questions about abuse of office, conflicts of interest, and whether the levers of economic policy are being pulled for personal or insider gain.

Trump himself, when asked yesterday about when he decided on the pause, gave a typically muddled answer: "Over the last few days, I've been thinking about it," followed by, "Fairly early this morning." A White House spokesperson defended the "BUY!" post merely as the President reassuring markets against "media fearmongering." Riiiight.

Will these investigations happen? Will we get answers? In past administrations, as one ethics expert noted, this would almost certainly trigger serious scrutiny. Today? It remains to be seen. But the fact that senior Senators are formally demanding probes into potential market manipulation and insider trading by the President himself, based on his own public statements and actions, is a truly staggering development and a massive, flashing red Daily Dose of WTF.

Sources:

• UPI (Reporting on Democrats' formal request for an investigation into potential market manipulation/insider trading, specific senators involved, questions asked, April 10, 2025)

• AP News (Reporting on investors profiting from Trump's "BUY" tip, Trump Media stock surge/gain, Trump's comments on timing, WH defense of post, background on market reaction, April 10, 2025)