The Greatest Corruption In History

They’re in bed with the cops

The most corrupt administration in American history continues to make history — this time with a multi-billion-dollar insider trading scandal profiteering off of the President’s declarations on whether or not our nation will continue to go to war. If the previous sentence sounds insane to you, that’s because it is. We are currently witnessing a level of corruption we’ve never seen. The point of this post is to show you just how bad it’s gotten.

Before we dive in, a quick refresher: Last Monday morning, Trump announced he was engaging in talks with Iran. Fifteen minutes before his announcement, however, we saw gigantic spikes in trading volumes across multiple different markets. At 6:49am, more than a half a billion dollars in oil futures changed hands. Within minutes, $1.5 billion worth of S&P futures were traded as well. Over in the prediction markets, one trader made nearly $1 million betting on the war with 93% accuracy. Multiple other traders were flagged for making what appeared to be insider trades.

We’re left with two conclusions: Either 1) multiple traders got extraordinarily lucky with their extraordinarily risky bets that they all made at the same time, or 2) multiple traders knew what was about to happen. Those who believe the former are beyond saving.

Most are outraged by what happened. But what’s missing in their response is an understanding of the greater context. This was not an isolated incident. It wasn’t even one of a couple of incidents. This was part of a larger chain of corruption that has become so standardized in this administration that we can only conclude it’s by design. It’s the kind of corruption that requires not just our ire, but coordinated resistance. We will get to next steps in a moment, but let’s first make sure we’re all on the same page and review some of the other recent scandals that have gotten (purposefully) buried in the news cycle.

E Pluribus Unum

One major scandal you might have forgotten about happened last spring, when more than a dozen government officials made unusually well-timed stock sales right before the President initiated one of the most market-roiling events in U.S. history: Liberation Day. This alone would have been cause for concern, but it was only the beginning.

A few days later, Trump made his first TACO, pausing the tariffs and thus yanking the markets right back up. But just a few minutes before he signalled that move, we saw another huge spike in S&P options trading, with some trades skyrocketing more than 2,000% in a single hour. It was one of the largest jumps in U.S. stock market history, and a handful of people were somehow able to predict it perfectly.

Before that, there was the crypto saga. Just days before his inauguration, Trump launched a meme coin that briefly hit a $27 billion market cap – 80% of which was controlled by Trump-affiliated companies. Suspiciously, 58 anonymous wallets made over a billion dollars dumping the coin, while more than 810,000 investors lost $2 billion combined. Melania’s coin was even worse: Twenty-four wallets bought tokens minutes before she even announced it and then flipped them for a collective $100 million. By the end of the year both coins had cratered, but the insiders were long gone.

We must also mention prediction markets, the new ground-zero for insider trading. There was the anonymous Polymarket account that bet $32,000 that Maduro would be ousted just hours before Trump announced his operation on Venezuela, for example. That account ended up making $400,000. There was also the account that made an unusually good bet on the timing of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death right before an airstrike killed him. That one returned more than half a million dollars. These are just two examples but there are more.

We could also discuss the tens of thousands of dollars the new DHS Secretary made buying oil and defense stocks right before the Venezuela invasion. Or last night’s report that Pete Hegseth’s broker tried to buy him defense stocks right before the Iran attack. Or the millions Trump’s children invested in military drone companies, also before the Iran attack. Or the billions Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner raised from Gulf State funds right before Trump revealed that he was the one who determined we should go to war. Insider trading is now a standard feature of this administration. You don’t even have to look hard to find it.

In Bed With The Cops

You might be thinking, “Isn’t all of this illegal?” The answer is yes. You might also be thinking, “Won’t they be prosecuted?” The answer to that question is no, because the most essential piece of Trump’s corruption strategy has been to corrupt the very law enforcement agencies whose job is to stop him. In the case of insider trading, that agency is the SEC.

After Trump took office, SEC enforcement actions on public companies declined by 30%, one of the largest drops ever. It also settled only $800 million worth of cases, the lowest number ever in years of administration change. Trump himself canceled or halted almost 160 enforcement actions in just one year, and white-collar crime prosecutions were cut in half. This was all by design.

Trump’s efforts form part of a long-running attempt to degrade the SEC. Both parties are responsible for this — or, to be more accurate, the Supreme Court is responsible for this. The SEC lost its might right after the Citizens United decision in 2010, which unleashed billionaires’ ability to buy our representatives and control U.S. legislation, hence why the agency is no longer interested in prosecuting financial crimes.

But here’s where Trump’s corruption has (again) gone above and beyond. Two weeks ago, after just six months on the job, the SEC’s enforcement director, Margaret Ryan, resigned. Why? At first it was unclear, as her resignation letter and public comments were unusually reserved. But soon, the truth came to light. Reuters reported that Ms. Ryan had expressed interest in bringing charges against many of Trump’s closest associates, including his family. Soon enough she was reportedly in trouble with her bosses, at which point she mysteriously quit.

A similar event took place over at the Department of Justice’s antitrust division just weeks before. Gail Slater, who was tasked with cracking down on monopolization, had run into multiple power struggles with top Trump officials who wanted to be more lenient on enforcement. (Or, to be more accurate, to not enforce at all.) Two of her deputies were eventually fired for “insubordination,” and it wasn’t long before Ms. Slater was ousted herself.

Gotham

Superhero fans have quite literally seen this movie before. The entire premise of Batman is that the cops can no longer be trusted as they are in bed with the criminals, so the city of Gotham needs Batman, the masked vigilante to enforce the law on the citizens’ behalf.

The previous sentence sounds a lot like America. In fact, America becomes more like Gotham everyday. Our politicians are increasingly bought; our law enforcement, increasingly compromised. Some would argue we’re in need of a Batman, but that’s a little too comic-book for me though. I would argue we need a Harvey Dent, Gotham’s hard-nosed district attorney who was willing to prosecute the powerful no matter the political cost. Right now we have … no one. Which brings me to my next point.

Advice To Dems

The single best platform Democrats could run this cycle is the following: Promise to put every Trump-associated insider trader behind bars. If that sounds radical to you, it isn’t. Tracking down and prosecuting insider-traders isn’t that complicated of a task, and it’s literally the SEC’s job. In addition, this could be one of the most politically popular movements in recent memory. Roughly nine in ten Democrats and Republicans believe insider trading in Washington is a problem that must be addressed with a trading ban.

Whichever candidate promises to put the insider traders in jail will probably win. At that point, they’ll have the chance to do something even braver: actually put them in jail. This would be a good move, not because it’s politically popular but because it’s simply the right thing to do. Billions of dollars have been made off of insider connections to the President — but the more honest way to put it is that billions of dollars have been stolen by insiders connected to the President. The corruption in our government is reaching a level that is simply untenable, and an easy win for any political candidate would be to promise to put an end to it.

Atlanta

I’m writing this on a flight from Atlanta. I flew down on Saturday to see my grandmother who recently suffered a stroke. Technically, she experienced “cerebral amyloid angiopathy,” a build-up of abnormal proteins in the brain that ultimately cause it to bleed internally. She lost her ability to move and speak, and was in hospital for several days until my mother and uncle made the difficult decision to bring her home for a more peaceful end.

As I entered her house I encountered childhood memories: Helping her water the plants in the garden, hunting for easter eggs in the park, eating Life cereal (my favorite) every morning. When I went in to see her she immediately lit up. “Hello!” she said. I sat down and held her hand and asked her how she was doing. She tried to respond but she couldn’t get the words out. So we sat there, holding each other, while my sister read her poetry.

The afternoon light was falling neatly at the foot of her bed and the birds were chattering politely. Her eyes were closed, but she held my hand firmly. It wasn’t long before I had to leave again. But for a brief moment, none of this mattered.

See you next week,

Ed