New York AG Looking Into Possible Insider Trading Case Against Trump

Donald Trump might be on the receiving end of another serious investigation launched by New York Attorney General Letitia James. James’ office announced this week that they were “reviewing” possible insider trading allegations against the administration for their stock market boasts and gains after Trump “paused” tariffs last week (which was preceded by Trump saying on Truth Social that now is a “great time to buy.”) There are some interesting aspects of this situation, but that doesn’t mean it rises to the level of criminal activity, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Office of New York Attorney General Letitia James announced this week that they are reviewing, not yet investigating, but they are reviewing claims that Donald Trump may have engaged in insider trading last week. Now, just a little backstory on this, in case you haven't been paying attention, uh, because again, I mean, there's constant, constant news and sometimes things fall through the crack. But as we all know, when Donald Trump put his tariffs in place on April 2nd, uh, the stock market crashed and it continued crashing for many days. Then last Wednesday morning, Donald Trump got on truth social as the stock market was still down and proclaimed this is a great time to buy. Then later in the day, he issued the so-called pause on his tariffs, which as I've said is not actually a pause. He just reduced them for 90 days, and the stock market rose by nine and a half points.

A lot of very rich people made a lot of money, including by the way, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the next day on Thursday, Donald Trump had some of these billionaires in the Oval Office, and he's bragging to reporters about how much money these people made. Yesterday, one of 'em made like 800, $950 million in the stock market. So it definitely looks like Donald Trump engaged in insider trading, and that is what Letitia James' office is going to look at. Now, here's the part you're probably gonna disagree with me on. This is a bad move. I mean, if you're just reviewing it, that's fine. If it goes beyond a review, if they do end up launching a full scale investigation that is incredibly misguided, this is not a case you're going to win. It seems like a case you could win, right? I mean, all the evidence appears to be there.

Donald Trump told people, Hey, go buy stocks. And then later in the day, did something that he knew was going to cause the stock market to surge and make a lot of people a lot of money. He may not have made any money, but by having that knowledge and then basically passing that knowledge onto others, that would be insider trading. But there's the rub you in order to secure. If again, this went to the, uh, uh, a level of investigations and then possible prosecutions, you would have to prove that Donald Trump tipped these people off, you know, specifically told them verbally or in writing a text message and email something that he was going to do it. So even if you have that, that's not necessarily

Completely insider trading either. So even if you had the evidence, I think it would be very difficult to secure a conviction and lacking that evidence, which right now we have no indication that such evidence would even exist. Uh, you have no, uh, uh, chance of securing a conviction. I I, I will give you this. This was shady, this was underhanded, and it absolutely looks like insider trading. And it wouldn't surprise me if that is what happened. Honestly, I believe that is what happened. I genuinely do. Could I prove it in a court of law? Probably not because I'm not a lawyer. If I was a lawyer, could I prove it in a court of law? Probably not. Could I get a conviction from a jury? Almost completely. Chances of that are zero, maybe 1%. So again, I appreciate what the New York Attorney General's Office is doing here, but I will reiterate, this is misguided.