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The Trump administration must get far tougher on corruption and insider trading, and its righteous crackdown on immense Medicare and Medicaid fraud provides a template for action.
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Unfortunately, however, the Trump administration is adopting the opposite approach toward insider trading and pay-to-play corruption.
Take Trump’s $1.8 billion shakedown of the IRS. This will provide compensation payments to Trump allies who say that the Biden administration unfairly weaponized the Justice Department against them. Who these individuals actually are, however, is left unclear. Will Jan. 6 rioters receive payments?
Then there’s the insider-trading epidemic and Trump’s pattern of buying stocks in companies that subsequently benefit from his own policy decisions.
TRUMP’S STATE VISIT IS A GOLDMINE FOR CHINA’S SPIES
One soldier has been charged with betting on Polymarket in anticipation of the raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. According to prosecutors, Gannon Ken Van Dyke made $400,000 in bet winnings by predicting when the Maduro raid would occur. The problem is that Van Dyke’s apparent insider trading is just the beginning. And it appears that many other government or military officials are getting away with similar crimes.
As the New York Times reported last week, “Thirteen [online prediction market] users wagered a total of $140,000 that Israel would strike Iran by the end of that week, even as the odds suggested that an attack was unlikely. Seven of the accounts had been opened just days earlier. Another had a history of bets related to military action against Iran — and had won money on all of them. Israel attacked Iran later that day, netting the accounts more than $600,000 in profits.” The paper also “found that more than 80 Polymarket users have placed bets with suspicious characteristics, including 38 whose well-timed wagers have drawn little or no public attention.”
Some of this betting includes highly sensitive information available only to a small number of military and political officials. The Times additionally reports how, “Trump at 3:38 p.m. gave the order to strike Iran while he was aboard Air Force One. Over the next few hours, at least 27 accounts placed thousands of dollars of simultaneous bets predicting that the United States would attack by Feb. 28. When the strike began around 1 p.m. on Feb. 28, the accounts collected profits of more than $700,000.”
The criminality is in plain view. So, why have so few people been charged with insider trading?
These are not terribly complicated investigations. After all, the FBI can subpoena account holder records, internet IP addresses (even ones hidden by VPNs), and cross-reference potential suspects against those who would feasibly have the relevant insider information.
Money flows, even via crypto accounts, can also be tracked. When Van Dyke was charged, FBI Director Kash Patel claimed that “no one is above the law” and that “any clearance holders thinking of cashing in their access and knowledge for personal gain will be held accountable.” The failure to bring chargeable cases in other notable insider trading cases makes clear that Patel has not lived up to that pledge.
But this ultimately starts with Trump. Just last week, the Justice Department dropped serious bribery and corruption charges against India’s richest man after he offered to invest $10 billion in the U.S. economy. This payoff is the sort of thing that gets you out of jail in Europe, but it is not supposed to happen in America. Sadly, it is predictable for the administration.
AMERICA HAS DONE MORE FOR HUMAN FREEDOM THAN ANY POWER IN HISTORY
Consider some examples from 2025.
First up, Trevor Milton. Convicted of defrauding investors, Milton was granted a full pardon and excused from potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution payments after he donated $2.5 million to the Trump campaign and associated PACs.
Then there’s Paul Walczak, who was convicted of healthcare fraud. He was excused both from restitution payments and from serving his prison sentence after paying $1 million to dine with Trump. Walczak’s mother is also a top Trump donor.
Or how about Joseph Schwartz? His fraud led to the ruin of numerous nursing facilities. He got out of his prison sentence and restitution payments after he paid pro-Trump lobbyists such as Jack Burkman to take his case to the White House.
Coming from a president for whom “draining the swamp” and countering corrupt elite castes was a primary campaign message, this inaction isn’t simply disappointing — it’s disgraceful. Hunter Biden’s use of then-Vice President Joe Biden for his own greed was rightly derided by conservatives — the New York Times report suggests that someone privy to the former president’s decision to pardon his son also made bets in that regard. But there is a staggering hypocrisy on the Right when it comes to Trump’s own penchant for corruption.
Indeed, Trump seems proud of his hypocrisy. How else can we explain his decision to appoint the tax-evading felon Charles Kushner as ambassador to America’s oldest ally?
This corruption directly threatens national security and the lives of those who defend America. Consider what might have happened had Cuba’s excellent DI intelligence service identified the best preceding the operation to capture Maduro. They would then have been able to warn Maduro’s Cuban bodyguards to move him to a new location and reinforce their position.
Not only would the operation to capture Maduro likely have failed, but dozens of Americans might well have been killed. Rather than a display of stunning military action, the Maduro raid would have been remembered as a bloody debacle. Rather than be cowed, Maduro and Cuba would have crowed over America’s failure. China would have laughed, Russia would have cheered.
Or what if the Iranian intelligence services or their Russian partners had identified the bets preceding the launch of Operation Epic Fury? Key Iranian leaders and military equipment could have been hidden or otherwise moved to high readiness. American and Israeli aircrews might have been shot down, potentially bringing forward the harrowing rescue of an F-15 aircrew to the first day of the war. What about the next military action? The rapid development of artificial intelligence will only help hostile intelligence services in better decoding these bets.
THE RED LINES TRUMP MUST PROTECT IN CHINA
A fundamental underpinning of America is the expectation that our capitalist system offers opportunities for extraordinary wealth. But so also is our democratic rule of law supposed to protect against extreme corruption.
