Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the Banking Committee, are calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether Trump administration insiders and friends profited off insider knowledge when President Trump paused steep tariffs this week.
They are asking SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to investigate potential violations of federal securities laws by Trump and his affiliates.
“We ask the SEC to determine whether President Trump, any members of his cabinet, or other donors, insiders, and administration officials engaged in insider trading, market manipulation or other securities laws violations on April 9, 2025, when President Trump announced that it was a ‘GREAT TIME TO BUY’ into the stock market,” the senators wrote.
Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) also signed the letter.
They noted Trump’s post on Truth Social urging people to buy stocks came “just hours before he announced a 90-day pause on his recently announced tariffs, leading to a historic market rally after days of dramatic market declines.”
The pointed out that Trump posted on Truth Social at 9:37 a.m. EDT Wednesday, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
“It is unclear which officials and affiliates for President Trump had advance knowledge of his plans to delay tariffs — but insiders may have known that he was going to announce a tariff pause and that the market would improve,” they wrote.
Trump had lunch at the White House that same day with financier and investor Charles Schwab.
A video later circulated on social media of Trump meeting with Schwab in the Oval Office in which the president points at Schwab and says, “He made $2.5 billion today. … That’s not bad.”
Warren reposted the video on the social platform X and wrote, “Donald Trump in a nutshell: doing everything he can tom make the ultra-rich even richer. We need to find out if Trump’s tariff chaos."
The Democrats are asking the SEC chair to inform them about what steps the agency has taken or plans to take to “investigate actions by President Trump, donors, and other potential insiders that may constitute market manipulation, insider trading or other violations of federal securities laws.”
They also want to know whether the SEC has received any communication from Trump, White House officials or Trump affiliates regarding such an investigation.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter from Schumer and Warren follows a letter that Schiff and Gallego sent to the Office of Government Ethics and White House chief of staff demanding an investigation of potential conflicts of interest among White House and executive branch officials who may have made financial transactions with insider knowledge of Trump’s 90-day pause on steep tariffs.
Schiff and Gallego have asked the White House to provide information about potential violations of federal ethics and insider trading laws before Trump announced Wednesday afternoon that he would drop reciprocal tariffs against most trading partners to 10 percent for a period of 90 days.
Schiff later told The Hill that he had “no expectation” that the White ...
