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insider trading
Hegseth Broker Reportedly Tried to Make 'Big Investment' in Weapons Stocks Just Before Iran War
"In a functional democracy, he would offer his resignation tonight."
Mar 31, 2026
A broker for Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly tried to make a "big investment" in a bundle of weapons stocks just weeks before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, an unpopular assault that Hegseth has aggressively championed.
Citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter, The Financial Times reported on Monday that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran." The bombing began on February 28.
A spokesperson for the Pentagon denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and insisting that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about such an investment. But the FT reported that the broker's "inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock."
The investment was not ultimately made because the fund—which includes behemoths such as RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman—was not available for Morgan Stanley clients to buy at the time.
The purchase would not have been immediately lucrative: Over the past month, the Defense Industrials Active ETF is down over 12%. But the reported allegation that Hegseth's broker sought to make the largest investment in the weapons industry set off alarm bells, particularly amid growing concerns that Trump administration officials are using inside knowledge and manipulating markets to cash in on the war.
"You know, back when the [US government] gave a damn about anti-corruption, this is something we would've seen as a 'no no,'" said Richard Nephew, a former anti-corruption coordinator at the US State Department.
Economist Justin Wolfers wrote of Hegseth that, "in a functional democracy, he would offer his resignation tonight."
Instead, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell demanded that the FT issue an "immediate retraction," dismissing the newspaper's story as "yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public."
Hegseth has emerged as the most prominent and belligerent cheerleader of the Iran war in the US, and—according to President Donald Trump—the Pentagon chief was the first of the president's advisers to "speak up" in favor of the assault during the internal decision-making process.
Trump has also suggested Hegseth does not want the war to end, saying last week that the Pentagon chief was "quite disappointed" when the president claimed the conflict would be over shortly.
"I don’t want to say this, but I have to," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I said, Pete and General Razin’ Caine, this thing is going to be settled very soon, and they go, ‘Oh, that’s too bad.'"
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Top SEC Official Reportedly Quit Over Leadership’s Soft Pedaling of Trump-Linked Cases
New reporting reveals that the top enforcement official at the Securities and Exchange Commission clashed with agency leaders over cases involving billionaires Elon Musk and Justin Sun.
Mar 24, 2026
The top enforcement official at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency tasked with investigating insider trading and other illegal activity in financial markets, resigned last week after reportedly clashing with the regulatory body's leadership over the handling of cases linked to President Donald Trump.
Reuters reported Monday that Margaret Ryan, who until last week served as director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, "wanted to be more aggressive in pursuing charges for fraud and other misconduct, including in cases that touched the president's circle, but faced resistance from SEC chair Paul Atkins and other top Republican political appointees."
Ryan, who previously served as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, lasted just under seven months in the SEC role, which observers said is unusual. According to Reuters, one case that "sparked tension" between Ryan and SEC leadership "involved cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, a major backer of the Trump family's World Liberty Financial venture."
Earlier this month—less than two weeks before Ryan announced her departure from the agency—the SEC dismissed a case against Sun that the Biden administration brought in 2023, accusing the billionaire of violating "antifraud and market manipulation provisions of the federal securities laws."
Reuters reported that another case over which Ryan and SEC leaders clashed "involved Tesla boss Elon Musk, a big donor to Trump's campaign who briefly served as the president's special adviser."
"March court filings showed that the SEC is in talks with Musk to settle charges that he waited too long to disclose in 2022 that he had amassed a large stake in Twitter, which he later bought and renamed X. That allowed Musk to buy more shares at artificially low prices, it said. The agency filed the charges a week before Trump took power in January last year."
"During a March 4 court hearing, the details of which were first reported by the FT, a lawyer for Musk said those talks were with officials above the SEC staff working on the case, the transcript shows," the outlet continued. "While it is common for the agency to settle litigation out of court, it had strong cases against both Sun and Musk and a good chance of winning tougher penalties in court, according to securities lawyers who had been tracking the proceedings."
Bombshell reporting alleging that the @SECGov enforcement director suddenly quit 6-mo into the job over the political appointees going too easy on Justin Sun & Muskhttps://t.co/t88oOk3AUu
— Amanda Fischer (@amandalfischer) March 23, 2026
Ryan's abrupt departure comes at a time when a small number of unidentified traders and gamblers are making huge, suspiciously timed bets related to major US foreign policy decisions, including in Venezuela and Iran. The lucrative bets have sparked concerns that members of Trump's inner circle are illegally profiting off nonpublic information—and potentially influencing life-or-death government decisions.
The New York Times noted that Ryan's exit could "further embolden" Atkins, the Trump-appointed SEC chair, to "rein in the agency’s enforcement division."
"Well before Ms. Ryan arrived," the Times reported last week, "the agency had begun to retreat from a variety of Biden-era enforcement priorities, including cracking down on Wall Street and the cryptocurrency industry."
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'Mind-Blowing Corruption': Traders Placed Massive Bets Minutes Before Trump Post on Iran
"Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer?" asked US Sen. Chris Murphy.
Mar 24, 2026
Just minutes before US President Donald Trump momentarily boosted the stock market—and sent oil prices tumbling—with his disputed Monday announcement of peace talks with Iran, unknown traders loaded up on positions that allowed them to profit from the resulting movement in equities and commodities.
The Financial Times reported that "roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands between 6:49 am and 6:50 am New York time on Monday, just a quarter of an hour ahead of the US president’s post on Truth Social that there had in recent days been 'productive conversations' with Tehran to end the war in Iran."
FT added that the notional value of those trades was $580 million.
"Trading volumes for Brent and WTI leapt at the same time, 27 seconds before 6:50 am," the newspaper reported. "Futures tracking the S&P 500 share index jumped in price moments after the oil trade, with volumes also rising significantly during that timeframe. It was not known whether one entity or several entities were behind Monday’s trades."
An unnamed trader at a "major hedge fund" told FT that "my gut from watching markets for the last 25 years is this is really abnormal."
"It’s Monday morning, there’s no important data today, there aren’t any Fed speakers you’d want to front-run. It’s an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk," the trader said. "Somebody just got a lot richer.”
A BBC review of market data similarly found that "traders bet hundreds of millions of dollars on oil contracts just minutes before" Trump's announcement of talks with Iran. Iranian officials publicly denied that they are negotiating with the Trump administration, and Iran's top lawmaker accused the US president of peddling "fake news" in an attempt to "manipulate the financial and oil markets."
The suspiciously timed bets ahead of the US president's post heightened concerns that Trump administration insiders are illegally trading on—and profiting massively from—nonpublic knowledge.
Responding to a report that $1.5 billion worth of S&P 500 futures was purchased just five minutes before Trump's Monday announcement, US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked: "Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer?"
"This is corruption," the senator wrote. "Mind-blowing corruption."
Last week, Murphy joined US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in unveiling legislation that would ban prediction markets on "government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome."
The bill came on the heels of suspiciously timed, highly profitable bets related to US military actions in Venezuela and Iran.
The Guardian reported Monday that several newly created accounts on the online prediction platform Polymarket "laid bets on a US-Iran ceasefire over the weekend that appeared to show signs of insider knowledge, according to experts."
Researcher Ben Yorke told the newspaper that the accounts—which are anonymous—"definitely" look like "someone with some degree of inside info."
The Guardian noted that "online crypto watchers and experts suggested that the bets bore the signs of insider trading—both because they bought their positions at market price, and because some of the accounts looked like they could belong to a single investor attempting to conceal their identity by splitting their bet between multiple wallets."
According to Yorke, "Typically, when you see wallet-splitting and deliberate attempts to obfuscate identity, it’s one of two scenarios: either a very large investor trying to shield their position from market impact, or insider trading."
The Trump White House insisted Monday that any suggestion of insider trading "is baseless and irresponsible reporting."
“The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge," said White House spokesperson Kush Desai.
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