Photo credits: Green Valley News, Dreamstime.com, The List.com
Representative Juan Ciscomani was SO happy when the House of Representatives passed the Stop Insider Trading Act in July. The bill would prohibit members of Congress and their families from buying and selling stocks. That would prevent them from using privileged information gained from their Capitol sources from profiting when ordinary investors couldn’t.
Ciscomani’s press release on the bill soared to heights of political rhetoric: “For years Americans have raised legitimate concerns about elected officials using the power and access of public office for personal benefit…public office is a responsibility, not a personal investment opportunity.”
Those statements were also loaded with plutonium-grade irony. The bill applied only to Congress (and only to future market transactions, allowing any stock already bought on inside information to remain securely in portfolios). It did NOT cover members of the Executive Branch, particularly the biggest stock-trader in Washington, Donald J. Trump.
The Guardian newspaper reported that in the very month the bill passed the House Trump made more than 1,000 stock trades worth up to $270 million. As of that month he had made more trades since January 2025 than all of Congress combined, part of $2.2 billion he made from his network of businesses and investments in 2025.
In particular, the Democratic half of the Senate Joint Economic Committee reported he made up to $15.5 million from investing in oil and gas companies, and greatly increased his holdings in pharmaceutical stocks by as much as $50 million, at about the time the Republican Congress passed, and Trump signed into law, a measure prohibiting Medicare from negotiating lower prices on high-cost drugs for seniors.
Insider trading? A White House executive in the first Trump administration, now an investment executive, thinks that’s what Trump has been up to: “Skybridge Capital co-founder and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci alleged Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration orchestrated a massive insider trading scheme tied to geopolitical announcements that yielded up top $400 million in illicit profits.”
Yahoo Finance further quoted Scaramucci on “highly suspicious trading activity occurring just one hour before Trump announced a five-day moratorium on Iran strikes [in March]…insiders purchased $1.5 billion in S&P futures contracts and $192 million in crude oil futures. “This isn’t politics anymore,” Scaramucci said, “This is a financial operation running out of the White House.”
What do Americans outside the Washington bubble think about this? The pollsters from the Associated Press recently asked them: “When it comes to allegations that he has profited from the presidency, 41% believe President Trump has done something illegal and 18% think his actions have been unethical but not illegal.”
So, Juan Ciscomani, what have you to say about this alleged massive White House corruption? Well, nothing, because Ciscomani will never venture to criticize his Big Boss, Donald Trump, for anything, much less ripping the nation off for billions.
Oh yes, the Stop Insider Trading Act never became law. It got a cold reception in the Senate, primarily because before passing the House, the GOP leadership there tacked on unrelated sections designed to promote “election security,” known to the rest of the world as “voter suppression.” The Democrats in the Senate weren’t biting. The bill seems to have been set up to fail by the House, just so Congressmen like Ciscomani could crow about their righteousness while the grift goes on at the White House.
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