President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day pause on retaliatory tariffs for every country except China sent stock prices into the stratosphere on Wednesday afternoon. After steep losses following Trump’s “Liberation Day” presentation last week, the sudden rally brought much-needed relief to rattled markets.
Democrats, who had hoped Trump’s tariff strategy would keep him in a politically precarious position, were likely dismayed to see him once again flip a high-risk situation into a win. Not only had he brought 75 countries to the negotiating table, but he had also managed to isolate an increasingly combative China.
Shortly after the rally began—during what appeared to be a conveniently timed encounter with the press—a reporter lobbed a question at congenital liar Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA): “How concerned are you with this market fluctuation, and do you believe members of the White House could be benefitting from it?”
Schiff told reporters he was “writing to the White House to demand who knew in advance that the president was going to, once again, flip-flop on tariffs. And are people cashing in? There is just all too much opportunity for people in the White House and the administration to be insider trading. And you can’t put it past them for a minute. So, we’re going to try to find out.”
There’s a good chance they’ll just ignore you though, right? Should there be some other independent investigation into this?” the reporter asked.
“Well, I think Congress should do an investigation into this, but we’re going to demand answers from the administration I think you’re right. They’re likely to stonewall, particularly if they’ve been engaged in corrupt insider trading.” But Schiff assured them, “They won’t be able to hide it for good. And we know who’s in the administration. We can look at … what people are buying and selling. This will come out.”
“But an administration that has their own meme coins and is already engaged in self-interested dealing with … Elon is Dogeing agencies that are doing oversight of his own businesses, in that kind of corrupt climate, you have to assume the worst,” Schiff added.
Two points.
First, Schiff is accusing administration officials of insider trading without offering a shred of evidence—perhaps because if he were in their position, he’d have done exactly that. It’s amazing to me that he’s not in jail. Schiff has played fast and loose with the truth for years, first during the Trump/Russia collusion investigation, which put him on the map, and then during the House impeachment inquiry. There seems to be no line this unethical, truth-challenged, repellent snake won’t cross in the name of partisanship.
And second, given the Democrats’ longstanding disinterest in investigating their own members over potential years-long insider trading, Schiff’s remarks reeked of hypocrisy.
The accusations didn’t stop there. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tore into Trump’s morning post on Truth Social in which he wrote: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”
Unbelievably, Murphy argued that a message sent to millions of the president’s followers was also insider trading. In the video below, Murphy explains: “An insider trading scandal is brewing. Trump’s 9:30am tweet makes it clear he was eager for his people to make money off the private info only he knew. So who knew ahead of time and how much money did they make?”
On Wednesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a top contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, called on “any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours” to disclose that now in a post on X. It seems the congresswoman had “been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor.”
Well, these comments are all quite rich. If there’s genuine concern about insider trading among government officials, perhaps they should start with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), whose wealth has soared since entering Congress. Her stock trades have been so consistently profitable that the Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker—a fund that mirrors transactions made by Pelosi and her husband—closed out 2024 with a stunning 54% return. (It even beat out Inverse Cramer last year, a fund that does the opposite of whatever Jim Cramer recommends—but I digress.)
But Pelosi is far from the only avid investor in Congress. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are frequent market participants.
Thankfully, Democrats do not currently control either chamber of Congress or they would already be demanding brokerage statements from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others.
However, if the party does win back either the House or the Senate in the midterms, these are the types of investigations we can expect.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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