Democrats Call for Investigations into Trades Surrounding Tariff Pause
57:44 Share

Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union, now offering real-time money movement with instant pay. Make transfers and payments instantly between financial institutions, online or through Star One's mobile app. Star One Credit Union, in your best interest.

From KQED.

From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Scott Schaefer in for Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, President Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs have created chaos in the financial markets. Trillions of dollars in wealth have been wiped out, leaving ordinary investors wondering what to do.

But who is profiting from these market gyrations? Democrats are calling for investigations into whether Trump and his family or his allies in Congress have benefited from inside information to cash in on the tumult Trump's tariffs created. We'll delve into allegations that some lawmakers are making money off Trump's trade war and what, if anything, can be done about it. That's next after this news.

This is Forum. I'm Scott Schaefer in for Mina Kim. When President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries on April 2nd, the stock market plummeted, wiping out trillions of dollars in wealth. Well, just before he announced he was pausing those tariffs two days later, he posted a message on Truth Social saying, now is a great time to buy. His announcement hours later triggered the biggest stock market rally in nearly two decades.

Well, now Democrats are asking who is making money off this chaos caused by Trump's policies and sudden policy reversals. They're demanding more transparency and investigations that, let's be honest, will likely not happen so long as Republicans control both houses of Congress. But this hour, we're going to examine how Trump's policies and alleged market manipulation could make insider trading and other violations of securities law more possible or even likely.

Joining me first this hour is Maria Aspin, finance correspondent with NPR. Maria, welcome. Thanks. Great to be with you. And Erin Mansfield. She's a democracy reporter with USA Today. Erin, welcome to you as well. Thank you so much. Maria, let's begin with you. Just kind of get us all on the same page here. Lay out the sequence of events around these tariffs, maybe taking us back to so-called Liberation Day, April 2nd, when these sweeping tariffs were announced by the president.

Right. So after they were announced by the president, we saw the worst two-day stock sell-off in five years since the early days of the pandemic. And over the next several days, the markets continue to be extremely volatile and pretty yippy, as the president later said. The technical term. The technical term. So...

On last Wednesday, about a week after he had announced these so-called reciprocal tariffs, in the morning, President Trump posted on his Truth Social Network, this is a great time to buy.

Less than four hours later, he also posted on Truth Social that he was going to pause many of the new tariffs. Now, the stock market shot up in relief. The Nasdaq had its best day in a quarter of a century. So if you had indeed bought into the market earlier that morning when Trump posted on Truth Social, you would have made a lot of money. Now, the

The White House did say Trump was just trying to reassure Americans about the stock market. A White House spokesman told me that it is the responsibility of the president of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security. But you can see why this sequence of events has raised a lot of eyebrows. Well, and, you know, this idea, hey, now's a great time to buy is terrific for people that have a pile of cash sitting around. But for ordinary people who are told to kind of sit tight with

when these gyrations happen, what happened to their portfolio? Well, if you checked your 401k over those days, something that I did not recommend and do not recommend, you know, you saw a lot of wealth evaporate. Now,

You know, the stock market, any one day's trading can be ephemeral, but it is still down. On Friday, it was down. Last Friday, the markets, the indices all closed down about 5% from where they had been on Liberation Day. So, you know,

If you have – if you're not in your retirement, if you have a long time to go before you have to tap your retirement savings or other investment – other savings that you might have invested in the stock market, you can afford to take the long-term view. But if you're, you know, close to a point where you might want to retire or think about tapping your savings, seeing that sort of sell-off is frankly scary. Yeah. Well, and coming back to this notion of, you know, Trump kind of giving –

notice about what he was going to do in the coming hours. I mean, it was on a public platform, you could say, right? So it wasn't insider in a sense that, you know, it was out there, right? Anybody who saw it could have acted on it. Well, and I guess that

brings up the question of, you know, how, when, when did Trump, A, know that he was going to pause the tariffs and B, communicate to those around him that that was what he was going to do? And on the first, on the first question, at least, I mean, only President Trump can really say.

Yeah. And do we have any sense? I mean, he could also have, of course, had private conversations. He was bragging, I think, yesterday that his quote unquote friend, Charles Schwab, made $2 billion on these market gyrations. Now, we don't know if that's accurate. We don't know why. There's a lot of unanswered questions there. But the point is, he could have easily picked up the phone, had personal private conversations that were more specific than what he wrote on Truth Social, right? Yeah.

Right. And that is the thing that is causing a lot of people, lawmakers, but also government ethics experts to say there's not necessarily hard and fast evidence that this was insider trading or market manipulation. But there should be an investigation that we should look into what was said to whom and when. And Erin Mansfield, what are you hearing? What are Democratic lawmakers saying about all of this?

So most notably, Senators Adam Schiff of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona sent a letter to the White House asking essentially a lot of these questions. It was a several-page letter.

They wanted to know if anyone traded on inside knowledge. They did not provide evidence, but they asked for a review of the situation. And they wanted the White House to provide them what are called periodic transaction reports, which are the forms that members of Congress, employees in the executive branch have to fill out when they make trades. And what would that reporting reveal?

Yeah. So if they're able to get these periodic transaction reports, which really are public and any member of the public will be able to get it within about 45 days, so sometime next month.

It would show when people traded and how much the trade was worth. But in order to find out if anyone had insider knowledge, that's something where you would have to get records of some kind of log or some kind of internal meeting beyond a Truth Social post. And I believe one lawmaker of all people, Marjorie Taylor Greene, did in fact release some information about trades, didn't she?

Yeah, she has been a very active trader in the past couple weeks. And she does seem to appear to be one of the first people to report. And so she's drawing a lot of scrutiny. But we're actually not going to know who traded and how much until that 45-day period is up. We're talking about May 24th. A month from now, we might have a window into at least who traded and how much, not

Not necessarily what they knew. Yeah. And Maria, what impact are the tariffs having more generally? Now, they've gone back and forth. You know, they've been levied. They've been paused. They've been increased on China. I mean, is it how long? What is the short term effect, Ben? And how long is it going to take to really know how this settles out?

All excellent questions that I'm not sure I can completely answer. But I think everyone, politicians, businesses, and consumers on down are trying to figure that out. Many of the, aside from China, many of the steepest tariffs that Trump announced two weeks ago now have been paused for 90 days. But there are still tariffs.

10% tariffs on almost all U.S. imports have still gone into effect. Economists across the political spectrum say that the tariffs that Trump has proposed generally will increase prices for consumers. They're also creating a tremendous amount of uncertainty among businesses as well as consumers, but the businesses that are making and trying to make decisions about

What hiring are they going to do? Where are they going to move operations? What investments are they going to make or not make? And all of that trickles down also to affect consumers.

And then, of course, there is, as we were talking about, just the impact on the stock market and all of our investments. And while not every American is invested in the stock market, about 60 percent of U.S. households do have some investments in the market, according to the Federal Reserve. Well, and of course, all the huge pension funds like CalPERS and CalSTRS here in California have very much invested in the stock market and have benefited from the rising market over the years, but very much affected by the downswing as well.

Absolutely. Well, and we should say that Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta are announcing this morning.

that they're suing the Trump administration over these tariffs. They're saying that they're causing this economic chaos in California and that Trump has really exceeded his authority, that these tariffs really require approval from Congress. Aaron, you know, you covered democracy, and it would seem to me that one aspect of a functioning, healthy society is that people feel that they can trust democracy.

that their investments and their financial decisions are going to be on somewhat of a level playing field, that they're not, you know, disadvantaged fundamentally in some way. So what is all this talk that we're having here and is happening across the country? What impact does it have on people's faith in institutions?

So so we can definitely hear some of those views coming out from from lawmakers who are raising questions about this, largely Democrats. You know, Chris Murphy, senator from Connecticut, a Democrat. He he essentially said that Trump's presidency could be one big scam. Now, that's his point of view. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been very critical. Same with Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts.

So we're definitely seeing people who are very concerned about this. I've spoken to experts about the insider trading and other ethical obligations on lawmakers. One of them, Craig Holman from Public Citizen, said he would like to see members of Congress actually barred from trading at all. So there are definitely some strong views coming out there all across the spectrum. You mentioned Senator Elizabeth Warren. She's called for an investigation,

asking the Office of Government Ethics to look into this. Who runs the Office of Government Ethics at this point? So the Office of Government Ethics is an executive branch agency, and Donald Trump actually fired their director very early in his term. So it has been run by an acting director for a few months. So, um,

Not, you know, not really in its full-scale capacity, but the Office of Government Ethics is what – they take in all these forms. They're called Form 278 from people who want to be a cabinet secretary, from very high-level chiefs of staff, and then from, like, tens of thousands –

Yeah. And I think they and maybe this is very much related, but the president also fired a number of watchdogs, didn't he, with the Department of Justice? Yeah.

He's fired a lot of people. It really depends on what sector you're in. In labor, on independent boards, Department of Justice had issues with...

Yeah, prosecutors who were on his cases. He has fired a lot of people. Yeah. All right. We're going to come back to this conversation with Maria Aspin and Aaron Mansfield. And we're going to continue the conversation about allegations of insider trading and so on. We would love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. Or you can reach us on all the social platforms, Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram and threads. We're at KQED Forum.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications. Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Try Greenlight risk-free today at greenlight.com slash Spotify.

And welcome back to Forum. Scott Schaefer here this hour for Mina Kim. We're talking about allegations of insider trading as President Trump's tariff policies are causing wild swings in the stock market. We're talking with Maria Aspin, finance correspondent for NPR.

and Aaron Mansfield, Democracy Reporter with USA Today. And joining us now is California Congressmember Mike Levin. He represents California's 49th District, which includes Southern Orange County and a bit of Northern San Diego County as well. Congressman Levin, welcome to Forum. Thanks, Scott. Good to be with you. Well, first of all, let me ask you, you know, you and your colleagues sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson. What was the gist of that letter?

The gist, Scott, was that we would like full transparency for all trades that were made by members of Congress between April 2nd and April 9th. And currently the law is something called the Stock Act, which says that members do need to disclose when they trade individual shares of stock. But that disclosure comes between 30 and 45 days after disclosure.

the trade is made and also does not include a time stamp it does not include uh... the specific amount in includes a range and i'd really like to see uh... everything that happened in the last week uh... between the second night particularly on the eighth and the ninth you recall that the president uh... put out on true social uh... at w it was nine thirty seven a_m_ on wednesday uh... the uh... the post

Today is a great time to buy. And what we know is that on the prior evening, Tuesday evening, the House Republicans had a dinner with President Trump.

We also know that many members of the administration had had discussions, has had many members of Congress with President Trump leading up to Wednesday, last Wednesday, and 937 was that post. And then at 1.18 p.m. was the announcement of the 90-day pause. So I would like personally to see the trades that were made pre-market,

and before that 937 post, and then others that were made in those next four hours, roughly four hours until the pause was announced. And this really, to me, you know, it reinforces the need, Scott, for a ban on members of Congress being able to trade individual stocks. I've advocated for that ban going on seven or eight years now, and I'll keep at it, and I think there's momentum building for it.

So when you say, and coming back to that letter, you want full transparency, are you asking members, specifically Republicans, but all members, to go beyond what the law requires in terms of disclosure? Yes, and in particular, the timing. So I'd like to see immediate action.

record of any transactions. Now, of course, I'm realistic in my expectations here. I don't expect Mike Johnson to push his members to do much of anything. But we'll be watching very closely, very carefully when the Stock Act disclosure comes out. We'll see which members traded. We'll see what they traded, both on the 8th and on the 9th. And I think there'll be a

a fair amount to digest. Look, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that there aren't any, you know, egregious trades or anything outside the norm. I just remember when I first got to Congress when COVID hit and we did get as members of Congress, a very significant then non-public information about the severity of COVID. And we, again,

saw is both members of the House and Senate traded on arguably on material non-public information with regard to COVID. And I felt then, as I do now, that was fundamentally wrong. No member of Congress, or for that matter, no member of the administration should be trying to make a buck on the non-public information that they get as a result of their job. That's part of

for me part of public services you're serving the public you're not serving your own financial interest have you heard anything back from speaker not a word in i'm not surprised because this uh... current leadership team in the house is not really interested in holding members of their own party to account just like this department of justice is not interested in holding the administration to account uh... and i think ultimately the court that will matter here is the court of public opinion

and like i said i i just hope that uh... the coverage i i know so much will happen i given that the about how nature the unpredictable nature of of the administration and and all that's going on in the world in the country but i hope in a month's time will remember uh... those uh... trades that were made on the eighth and ninth and in the days leading up to it by and uh... look most everybody uh... with public

information sold in the days leading up to the tariff pause. And I'm curious to see what members of Congress or members of the administration may have done. Well, one of your colleagues, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, spoke to reporters in Washington on April 10th about all of this. Let's hear a little bit of what she had to say. The Republican Party in its first 100 days has set themselves up, yes, not only to lose majorities, but also to

to frankly enrich themselves in the process. I don't even know if they want to keep their majorities next year more than they are here to enrich themselves. And everyone should be enraged at that. And this is also, I don't, I do not, I genuinely do not care if it's a Democrat or a Republican, but anybody who traded in the last 48 hours and made,

An incredible amount of money prior to this tariff announcement who sits right there in that house needs to answer for it. Congressman Levin, this is not a new issue. You mentioned during COVID there were some trades. I think Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina, maybe Kelly Loeffler from Georgia also traded.

some suspiciously timed trades on health stocks. Nancy Pelosi was accused of similar kind of, you know, inside trading. I don't think anything was ever confirmed around that regarding her husband, Paul, benefiting from information she would have gotten from briefings.

But let me just say, I mean, Democrats have controlled everything in the past, you know, the White House and Congress. Why? It seems if there is bipartisan support for this and clearly outrage now among Democrats, why wasn't something done previously?

Well, you're absolutely right. It's deeply frustrating, and it's certainly not for my lack of having tried. And I will tell you that it's tough to change the system when incumbents benefit from that system. That's true whether it's with regard to trading stock. It's true

uh... with regard to accepting corporate campaign contributions or not getting the dark money out of the political system so uh... you're absolutely spot on i will tell you though that we do have now a growing bipartisan coalition around

a stock trading ban and some unlikely allies in this. It was actually President Trump in 2022 that said he supported a ban on members of Congress being able to trade stock. And then most recently, Hakeem Jeffries,

Just in the last few days, the Democratic leader in the House said that he was for a stock trading ban. So I see momentum. I see it among Democrats. I see it among Republicans. And I think that if there is evidence that, as has been implied, that members did benefit from the nonpublic information that they may have had leading up to the tariff pause,

I think that that will have a backlash in the House. I think that people all across this country will stand up and demand a vote on a stock trading ban. And we will do everything we can to push Mike Johnson to do it.

if he won't do it i hope that i came jeffries will do it if he becomes speaker of the house after twenty twenty six in any event i am confidence got that if that vote will occur occur on the house floor that that would pass that we would pass a stock trading ban and that the senate would pass it as well and the president

would sign it into law. If I didn't feel that way, I wouldn't keep at it. All right. That is Congressman Mike Levin representing California's 49th District in Orange County and northern San Diego County. Congressman Levin, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Very good to be with you. Take care.

Let me bring our guest back in, Maria Aspin from NPR, Aaron Mansfield from USA Today. Maria, your thoughts about what Congressman Levin just said in terms of transparency? And, you know, let's suppose a miracle lightning strikes and there is full transparency. Is anything if they if members did act ahead of time based on information that they got from Truth Social or from President Trump himself or the administration, is it illegal?

Yes, but it's hard to prove. And as you brought up the case of Senator Richard Burr, who around the pandemic, I believe, was found to have different information, communicated different information and made trades.

Then he was communicating publicly and nothing – there were no consequences. So when it comes – Who would have – where would those consequences have come from? Oh, well, so – Besides the voters. Besides the voters. The body that investigates insider – claims of insider trading is traditionally the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

It is an independent agency. However, President Trump has recently signed an executive order trying to take more control over independent agencies, including the SEC.

And by coincidence, the day that this all went down last Wednesday was also the day that the Senate voted to confirm President Trump's nominee to run the agency, a businessman and former SEC commissioner named Paul Atkins. What do we know about him?

So he was one of the SEC's commissioners during the George W. Bush presidency. More recently, he's been running a consulting firm that does business for a lot of financial, including cryptocurrency companies. And that's...

Also, you know, that is a hot topic when it comes to the SEC, because as we know, President Trump is very pro-crypto, has promised to turn the United States into the crypto capital of the planet, also has personal business interests in cryptocurrency. And under President Biden, the SEC was...

loathed by the crypto industry, which argued that it was cracking down unfairly on crypto companies and making it difficult for them to do business. The consensus is that Paul Atkins will be a much more crypto-friendly commissioner. Yeah. And again, coming back to

To you, Aaron, you know, it seems like a lot of this, you know, we hear, you know, Maria saying that, you know, Paul Atkins has his own conflicts of interest. You know, Dr. Oz has a whole bunch of conflicts of interest, even though he kind of regulates a huge part of the insurance industry and Medicaid and Medicare. Is this kind of just becoming normalized? I mean, it seems to me in the past presidents would go out of their way to avoid the appearance of a conflict, much less actual conflicts.

So in order so it is common for for people to come in with heavy financial interests. For example, an appointee as secretary of treasury is very likely to have a lot of investments and really a lot of a lot of wealthy people tend to put their money in investments.

The way that those conflicts of interest are supposed to be handled is that those cabinet appointees, for example, someone like Dr. Oz, someone who has to be confirmed by the Senate, they go through the Office of Government Ethics and they do a kind of negotiation where they come up with an ethics agreement where they say, okay, within 90 days or as soon as practicable, I'm going to sell all my stock in conflicted interests.

And there are some quite lengthy ones you can find on the OGE website. Scott Bassett had a really long one. And that is how those are supposed to be handled. Is that, in fact, how they're being handled? Yes. Yes, that is how they're being handled. You can actually find it on the OGE website. A lot of these a lot of these ethics agreements are.

I want to give out the phone number again. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What's your reaction to what you're hearing here? What do you think of Trump's encouragement to buy before the tariff pause? And what actions would you like to see Congress make? You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org or you can find us online.

on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. We're at KQED Forum. You can give us a call right now if you'd like, 866-733-6786. Again, 866-733-6786.

We've got some comments here. Noel writes on Discord,

I'm wondering, I know, Maria, that you have been talking with people like Richard Painter, who previously served as a chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. What are you hearing from some of these ethics folks? Yeah. So I spoke with Richard Painter last week, and he was great.

He said, again, that while there was not necessarily hard and fast evidence of market manipulation or insider trading, he said it should absolutely be investigated. And he also said that if something like this had happened while he was in the White House under George W. Bush, that he told me that person probably would have been fired. Now, obviously, it's kind of a different world. You know, that was...

pre-truth social and almost pre-Twitter. So we are in this different media environment of presidents and lawmakers and other elected officials and U.S. leaders, frankly, being able to communicate directly with very little friction. But it was notable to hear Professor Painter say that this

this raised a lot of eyebrows. Yeah. Why are there no universal sort of national insider trading laws? Or are there some, but it's just so hard to prove? Well, I think it's hard to prove. And also, you know, there are different rules depending on where you are. I mean, I think Congressman Levin brought up that there have been a

attempts, bipartisan attempts to ban all stock trading in general by lawmakers and just kind of remove the temptation, as it were. And we saw, in fact, today, or I'm sorry, yesterday, Missouri Senator Republican Josh Hawley say on X that he was going to reintroduce the bill that he co-sponsored last year banning stock trading by members of Congress. Yeah, and I think maybe that might be one of the people who

that Congressman Levin was referring to in terms of some unusual, surprising bipartisan support. Josh Hawley, of course, a very conservative Republican from Missouri. Well, let's go to the phones now and let's go to Sacramento. And Rick, you're on. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. You know, you can almost see in Trump's personality the love of manipulating the world as he's doing now. Not just the United States, but the world. And the other thing is, you know, when you speak of ethics and what you need is a grassroots approach.

swelling of ethics that would normally start at universities and colleges with young people. And now they're a little bit afraid. The universities themselves are afraid because they're not getting any government money. And it all seems very well preplanned. And it just seems to fit his personality of wanting total control. Yeah, well, he does certainly brag about, you know, countries, you know,

You know, coming to him, unbended knee, trying to cut deals on trade and so on. So that certainly, you know, is consistent with that. Aaron, you know, we've seen in other countries where there are autocrats, dictators, they are personally very wealthy. I'm thinking of, you know, Putin, who, you know, is allegedly one of the richest people in the world. We'll never know for sure.

Is are there parallels here? We've seen other parallels made with what Trump the Trump sort of playbook with what people like Orban is doing in Hungary. I mean, is there a financial parallel here to what's happening?

So when we're talking about billionaires in government, I think the one who comes to mind isn't even Donald Trump. It's Elon Musk because of his very prominent position in Doge. One of the issues that, you know, when we were talking about conflicts of interest, it actually hasn't been 100 percent clear whether or not he's actually had to file a financial disclosure in order to

This is a gentleman who has interests all across DOD or Department of Defense, NASA, through all of his companies. I'm going to stop you there because we do need to take a break. But Elon Musk is an excellent topic to come back to after the break. We'd love to have you join us. Give us a ring at 866-733-6786.

866-733-6786 or reach out on any of the social media platforms. We're at KQED Forum. Scott Schaefer here this hour for Mina Kim. We're going to talk about cryptocurrency and what's happening in that regard as well regarding the Trump administration. Stick around.

Great days start with great underwear, and Tommy John makes the greatest.

With Tommy John, you make each day better than the last. And with over 20 million pairs sold and thousands of five-star reviews, guys everywhere love their Tommy John. Plus, you're fully covered with Tommy John's best pair you'll ever wear or it's free guaranteed. Grab 25% off your first order now at TommyJohn.com slash Spotify. Save 25% at TommyJohn.com slash Spotify. See site for details.

And welcome back to Forum. Scott Schaefer here this hour for me and Kim. We're talking about allegations of insider trading as President Trump's tariff policies cause wild swings in the stock market. My guests, Maria Aspin, finance correspondent with NPR, and Aaron Mansfield, democracy reporter with USA Today. And joining us now is Robert Fattorecci. He's a reporter with ProPublica. Robert, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. And I want to give out the number once again, if you'd like to join us, it's 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. Robert, we've been talking about, you know, insider trading, the tariffs. What are some of the other business dealings that Trump has engaged in that, you know, potentially or for sure have benefited his allies?

Well, I think the thing to think about most on that front is that he is a majority shareholder in a publicly traded company, Trump Media. You know, the actions he takes broadly affect the market and affect Trump Media. He is not divested. And

very close to him still run that company. So, you know, that is a clear conflict that continues to this day. He has picked the person who will run the SEC, which is the entity that will regulate his own company. It's a conflict we have never seen before.

Yeah. And just to be clear, the White House has said, look, there's there's nothing to see here. This is, you know, this is just the market doing its thing. And, you know, it's the economy is bigger than one person and there's no benefit here to Trump or his family. What are you hearing in that regard from the White House or anybody else in government?

Well, yeah, I mean, what, what, what they've said is that everything is above board. Um, but, uh, I think we need to look closely at what the SEC does in the coming months and years. Um, will the SEC aggressively regulate, uh, Trump's company? Will they aggress aggressively regulate the companies of his allies? Um, there is, uh, an ongoing matter that involves Elon Musk and Tesla. Um,

It was allowed to continue early in Trump's term, but the SEC leadership asked for the staff working on that matter to sign a pledge that they were not politically motivated in pursuing the matter. Of course, you would not want them to be politically motivated, but generally, as

SEC staff is not required to sign such pledges. So you could very easily argue that that kind of thing has a chilling effect and may make people who work at the SEC think twice about moving forward on those kinds of cases in the future. Well, certainly this president has shown little reluctance to fire people who don't do what he wants or who have done things he didn't like in the past.

Of course, of course. You're seeing the same thing at DOJ, right? It is very, very different than it was during the first term. I think there are real questions and doubts about whether members of the Trump administration, political allies, other allies will face the same sort of aggressive criminal and civil scrutiny as they did during the first term.

All right. I want to go to the phones in a second. Again, it's 866-733-6786. We've got some listener comments as well, including this one. What you're describing isn't just corruption. It's the institutionalization of impunity.

When the president engages in insider trading and his inner circle profits only to be later shielded by pardons, we're no longer in the realm of democratic governance. We've crossed into a mafia state where law is not a framework but a weapon, where loyalty to Trump's legal—I'm not quite sure what they mean there—where loyalty—oh, I see, loyalty to Trump's legality and justice is reserved for the expendable."

Let's go back to the phones. And Charlie in Fremont, welcome to Forum. You're next.

Hey there, Scott. So I don't think they should ban the trading on the floor. I think we should get a part of the pie. You know, every transaction they make, we should get a percentage. We should get a percentage of even the MAGA Trump hats. Any money they make, we've provided them with that opportunity. And every transaction that's done on the floor, they should publicize it. You know, when Nancy Pelosi buys a pile of NVIDIA stock,

we should get a percentage of what she makes because we put her there. Maria, that's a clever idea. But what are you, do you have a sense over the years, and the caller Charlie mentions Nancy Pelosi, and she has been accused of certain things that haven't been proven in terms of this sort of thing. But do you have a sense? I mean, it does seem that a lot of people go to Washington, they join Congress, and when they leave, they're a lot more wealthy than they were when they got there.

And they don't make that much money. Has anyone, you know, have you looked into that? Like what explains that? Well, actually, to your caller's point, well,

There is actually my colleague, my NPR colleague, Girdra Walsh, has actually reported on this. There are financial products you can buy into that will track what lawmakers invest in, and they tend to outperform the market. Interesting. So it's not quite us all getting a percentage of whatever stock trades lawmakers or stock gains lawmakers benefit from, but those products do exist, and in fact, nonprofit creditors

critics of stock trading by lawmakers have said this is kind of more evidence that lawmakers are perhaps using insider knowledge to a degree more than they should. And I should also note that Pelosi's office, Nancy Pelosi's office, has for a long time said she does not trade stocks herself, but her husband, who is an investor, does. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, Dianne Feinstein's husband as well was in the stock market, as, you know, many people are.

Charlie, there you go. That's what you can do. Buy into a fund that tracks what members of Congress do. I buy every stock that Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein buy. But, you know, in my family, we have 6,000 shares of NVIDIA stock right now. So we're doing okay. All right. Well, that's good.

I just want to say to everybody, follow everybody. But if I do think other things like the mega hats and all that crap that he's selling, the Doge coins and all that stuff, we should get a percentage of that because we're affording them to do that. Yeah. All right. Well, Charlie, thanks very much for the call. Robert, last year –

pivoting a little bit here. You reported on a story about witnesses who testified in the criminal cases against Trump. I think they were employees of the Trump campaign or businesses, and they received significant financial benefits. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah. So we had this unusual situation, um, during the campaign, um, when Trump was facing multiple criminal inquiries, uh, and there were a subset of witnesses in those criminal matters who were still working either for his companies or for, um, his campaign. And we documented, uh,

instances. I think it was about a dozen people who, uh, you know, received, uh,

large financial benefits, sometimes at sort of sensitive points during that period. So maybe, you know, after they received a subpoena, but before they testified at the grand jury. We saw, you know, raises to their salaries. We saw lucrative appointments to Trump media, that sort of thing. And, you know,

What experts told us in that case is a criminal defendant has to be really careful about that kind of thing. Otherwise, they could be accused of witness tampering. And is there fire where that smoke appeared? I mean, well, does it not apply to you said criminal matters? I mean, is that a defendant? I mean, does it not apply here?

Well, you know, it absolutely did apply. All of those cases are now basically done with. So it's a moot matter. Yeah. And it's hard to prove.

Yeah, yeah. What you would have to be able to prove is that it was done with the intent to influence testimony. And what was the testimony like? I mean, was it not harmful to Trump and his businesses? It varied, yes. Some of it was testimony that actually helped his case. Interesting. There's also this...

company or interest called World Liberty Financial that his sons, Eric and Don Jr., are heavily involved in. They started it last year in September. It's grown really quickly. What can you tell us about that?

Well, again, it's a massive conflict, right? He is the person who appoints the chair of the SEC. The chair of the SEC sets the regulatory agenda for the SEC, which previously was regulating crypto. And what the SEC is now moving towards is no longer regulating crypto in a meaningful way.

And what you know, that that's at least in the short term, that's great news for people who are involved in the crypto business and the Trump family and Trump personally in various forms.

have very much been involved in that sector. So what you're seeing is Trump's SEC is taking moves that benefit the Trump family and Trump himself financially. All right, let's see if we can sneak a quick call in here. Donald in Oakland, you're next. Hello? Yeah, go right ahead. Be brief if you could, because we have to take a break in a sec. Oh, it'll be brief, Scott. I always thought that when...

people serving Congress or an administration, they put their financial holdings into a blind trust, which I didn't think they had to sell anything. They just put it into a blind trust where they can't make any kind of trades. But now I've heard from one of your people that they have to sell their holdings if they're in the administration, not in Congress. So I don't understand that. Yeah. Maria, can you clarify that?

Yeah, I will defer to Aaron on this one. My understanding is that they don't – that it's different from the executive branch and Congress, but I'll defer to Aaron. Yeah, Aaron?

So in a lot of cases, if you own a stock that is directly conflicted, and let's say you're going in to be a cabinet member, you're going to negotiate with the Office of Government Ethics. And one of the easiest things to do is to sell your stock. You might be able to put something into... You have members of Congress who argue that they're not the ones trading, and you might be able to put it in a blind trust, depending on what you negotiate with the Office of Government Ethics. But you're going to be able to sell your stock.

Usually the easiest thing to do is to just sell the stock or transfer. Robert F. Kennedy decided to transfer some interest to a non-dependent family member. That was the way he handled it. But selling tends to be one of the more common things to do. You also hear from, for instance, Marjorie Taylor Greene. She commented on her recent trades to

the Associated Press that she has her financial advisor control her investments. And that is a common way for members of Congress to handle it. Yeah. Donald, thanks very much for that call. You're listening to Forum. I'm Scott Schaefer in for Mina Kim.

We've got some listener comments here. Ron writes,

Maria, do you have a sense that people care about this issue or do they all kind of assume like, you know, as my grandfather used to say, oh, they're a bunch of crooks? Well, I think both can be true. I think that bans on insider trading have generally had bipartisan constituent appeal. But I think there also tends to be a sort of

Fatigue and cynicism that, you know, I'm not a politics reporter, but that I think we saw play into some of the ongoing appeal of President Trump in both of his elections, the idea that

You know, all of the elites are corrupt and and regardless of party. Yeah. Robert, you know, coming back to the crypto issue, Trump has a kind of an interesting history on crypto in 21 or 22. He called crypto a scam and needed to be tightly regulated. You know, now he's gone completely 180 in the other direction. Any idea why?

Well, you know, I think there are two theories. They might both be true. One is that, like we talked about previously, he and his family have gotten involved in the crypto business themselves. The second theory would be that the crypto industry itself

you know, became huge donors to his campaign and in doing so had access to him and maybe made arguments that helped change his mind. I would like to say one thing about the Congressional Insider Trading and the or trading and, you know, the cynicism around that. I think that

I did the reporting about Richard Burr selling off most of his portfolio before the coronavirus crash while he was on the health committee and getting briefings about the impending coronavirus crisis. I deeply believe that this is an area where there can be abuses. I do think that there...

the perception of this issue has maybe become a bit inflated. You'll see a lot of people point to any well-timed trade by a member of Congress and sort of declare that that must be insider trading. And I think it's important to be careful about that.

You have to look at what the market moving event was that made that a well-timed trade. You have to do some digging to see if that member of Congress would have had any opportunity to know about that market moving news. Oftentimes, they wouldn't. So I guess I would just want to caution the listeners to not think that just any well-timed trade by a member of Congress is

is evidence of insider trading. You know, like we just talked about, oftentimes they're not even controlling their own trading. So, you know, just to add to the dialogue. Yeah. We're going to go to Ajay in Fremont. And Ajay, we're almost at the end of the hour, so make it really brief if you could. How the announcement of tariffs and the reversal, maybe there's no provable insider trading, right? Like he...

He told somebody about it, but we saw that Trump was bragging. He was introducing his friends in the White House, Charles Schwab, and he was bragging about how he made him billions of dollars. How is that by itself not a huge potential conflict of interest for the future? He's going to do more of it, not less. Yeah, no, exactly. We had mentioned Charles Schwab earlier. Maria, any thoughts about that? I mean, this is a president who doesn't shy away from bragging about helping his friends make a buck.

Right. And who's who's, you know, who likes to be seen as a very successful businessman and who has been embraced to a certain extent by the business community because of that. And just to follow on to what Robert was just saying, I do think.

There's this spectrum, right? Because people who are in the quarters of power, they tend to be sophisticated investors who are paying attention to what's going on in the world. It's not necessarily insider trading or they're not necessarily acting on insider knowledge if they are sophisticated.

making smart or well-timed bets, but it's trying to figure out where the fire is and not just the smoke, to go back to your earlier analogy. Exactly. And it does, of course, it doesn't do much to increase confidence in the markets and a level playing field. Thanks to all of our guests, Maria Aspin, finance correspondent for NPR, Aaron Mansfield, democracy reporter with USA Today, Robert Fattorecci, reporter with ProPublica. Thank you all so much. Thank you.

And thanks also to Congressman Mike Levin, who joined us earlier in the hour. And as always, thanks to our listeners for your smart questions and comments. You've been listening to Forum. Thanks to all of our guests. Thanks to all of you. I'm Scott Schaefer in for me to Kim. You've been listening to Forum.

I just think Jesus was what we would now define as Christ.

And family. We're not physically close and we're not like that emotionally close either. So join me and some amigas as we have easy conversations about hard things. Catch Hyphenation from KQED Studios wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Hey, it's Glenn Washington, the host of the Snap Judgment podcast at Snap.

We tell cinematic stories that let you feel what it's like inside someone else's skin. Stories that let you walk in someone else's footsteps. Storytelling like you've never heard. The highs, the lows, the joys, the pain, the twists, the turns, the laughs, the life. Snap Judgment drops each and every week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.