Jack Mullen
“The house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless,when that perfect hand comes along, you bet and you bet big, then you take the house.” – Danny Ocean
Research the inside trading and and family acquired ownership of organizations and companies soon to receive government contracts.
Let’s be clear about what we’re dealing with here. This is not a story about a few bad apples. This is a story about a system—a rotten, greased-up machine—where the people who write the rules, or at least the people who sleep next to the people who write the rules, get to peek behind the curtain before the rest of us suckers are even allowed in the lobby. We are talking about the intersection of family dynasties, corporate shells, and the gusher of federal money that is supposed to be for the public good. The hypothesis is simple: insiders, often linked by blood or marriage, acquire stakes in companies that, through a series of “coincidences” that would make a conspiracy theorist blush, are then awarded massive government contracts. Is it a crime? Sometimes. Is it an ethical Chernobyl? Always.
Trump’s History of Suspicious Deals
The pattern is old. Older than this administration. You can trace the DNA of this chicanery back through decades of Trump family business. Mother Jones, back in 2020, compiled a long list of shady financial mysteries that Trump still refused to explain—from tax fraud schemes uncovered by the New York Times to the shuttering of the Trump Foundation for “illegal use” of charitable funds [motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/a-long-list-of-shady-financial-mysteries-trump-still-refuses-to-explain/]. This wasn’t an anomaly. It was the operating system.
The template is “family acquired ownership.” You don’t just get a job in this world; you get a piece of the action. The Trump children—Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka—weren’t just figureheads; they were partners in a family conglomerate that blurred every possible line between private interest and public access. When Trump took office the first time, he famously refused to divest, instead handing the reins to his sons while retaining ownership. That was phase one. Phase two, which we are witnessing now, is the monetization.
Consider the sheer audacity of the numbers. Mark Halperin reported in the Daily Mail that Trump’s 2026 financial disclosure forms—927 pages long—paint a portrait of wealth generation “unlike anything previously associated with any occupant of the Oval Office” [dailymail.com/debate/article-15945243/Trump-billion-financial-disclosures-MARK-HALPERIN.html]. The president reported at least $2.2 billion in total income, with a net worth surging to $4.7 billion. The most “eye-popping” figure? Over $1 billion in income from cryptocurrency ventures. This is not the profile of a public servant. This is the prospectus of a multinational conglomerate that happens to have a nuclear football.
But let’s get to the specific, verifiable mechanics of the grift. We don’t need to speculate. The evidence is in the trading records.
Trump and Family Have Made A Fortune from Inside Trading Since Taking Office
This is where the report gets its teeth. The evidence is not circumstantial; it is temporal. It relies on timing—that old reliable friend of the investigator.
On June 30, 2026, Yahoo Finance reported a bombshell: an account associated with Donald Trump bought up to $5 million in stock of Axon Enterprises, the Taser and body-camera manufacturer [finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/trumps-family-account-bought-5m-194500387.html]. Now, you might say, “So what? The man has a portfolio.” But wait for it. Two weeks later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sought a massive $220 million government contract. For what? Axon products, presumably. The timing is less a coincidence and more of a dead body in the room.
This is the textbook definition of what an empirical study would flag. We have academic sources from the Harvard Law Review that demonstrate a “strong correlation between political connections and success in securing government contracts” [ecgi.global/publications/working-papers/political-connections-and-government-contracting-an-international]. Specifically, Harvard’s law and economics center found that “family-owned firms show abnormal trading patterns and returns around the announcements of government contracts” [laweconcenter.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/264.pdf]. Abnormal. That’s the polite academic word for “suspicious as hell.”
The Axon deal is not an isolated incident. Look at the structure. The president owns a media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). On July 21, 2026, Congressman Ritchie Torres sent a letter to the SEC about TMTG’s new “Truth API” product [ritchietorres.house.gov/posts/rep-torres-presses-sec-on-trump-medias-new-insider-trading-api]. The API is designed to sell Wall Street firms millisecond-precise access to President Trump’s posts on Truth Social. The president uses this platform to announce tariff decisions, trade wars, and policy shifts that move markets. The API lets insiders trade on that information before the public can even refresh their feed. Rep. Torres called it a “fundamentally different” system. We call it a legalized, subscription-based insider trading scheme, monetized by a family-owned corporation – a GRIFT!
The STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act) was supposed to end this. Passed in 2012, it explicitly states that members of Congress and senior executive branch employees are not exempt from insider trading laws [complianceconcourse.willkie.com/resources/insider-trading-us-the-stock-act/]. But as the Brennan Center has documented, the law is full of “loopholes” and enforcement is laughably weak [justsecurity.org/84988/members-of-congress-shouldnt-trade-stocks-but-even-in-solutions-loopholes-remain/]. The 2020 COVID trading scandal, where Senator Richard Burr dumped up to $1.7 million in stocks after a private briefing, ended with no charges [publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2023/10/23/the-congressional-insider-trading-conflict-of-interest/]. The message is clear: if you have power, you can trade.
The FBI has charged others. In May 2026, they announced charges against 30 people—corporate attorneys and traders—in a decade-long insider trading scheme tied to merger deals [wcvb.com/article/fbi-insider-trading-scheme-law-firms/71234858]. A father-son duo (the Stewarts) were charged for trading on healthcare merger tips [fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newyork/news/press-releases/manhattan-u.s.-attorney-and-fbi-announce-insider-trading-charges-against-managing-director-of-investment-bank-and-his-father]. So the feds know how to catch this crime. They just seem to miss it when it happens in the Oval Office.
I believe that most of the people now in positions of power, or in positions that could bring attention to the graft and fraud, are deeply compromised. This is the result of careful replacement over the years of key people in key positions, such that an Epstein-class of people now fully control all levers of public accountability.
How Can American Trust A Leader That Uses His Office As A Tool Of Insider Trading
How can they? The short answer is: they shouldn’t. And the polling suggests they don’t. Trust in institutions is at historic lows, and this is why. The structure of this administration is a perfect machine for regulatory capture and familial enrichment.
This isn’t just about Donald Trump. It’s about the “revolving door” and the “politically exposed person” (PEP) status that should trigger extra scrutiny but rarely does [wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_exposed_person][fiveable.me/ap-gov/key-terms/revolving-door]. The system is designed to fail. The SEC, under a new chairman in 2025, shifted priorities, gutting the dedicated crypto enforcement unit and moving “back to basics” [gibsondunn.com/securities-enforcement-2025-mid-year-update/]. But “back to basics” apparently means ignoring the $220 million elephant in the room.
The academic literature is damning. A study from Springer Nature on “Family Corruption in Business and Public Administration” (February 2026) states that family corruption ranges from “petty nepotism to full-blown dynastic state capture” [link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-08298-5_8]. The ECGI found a “strong correlation between political connections and success in securing government contracts” [ecgi.global/publications/working-papers/political-connections-and-government-contracting-an-international]. Where there is family ownership, there is often a higher likelihood of insider trading violations [journals.law.harvard.edu/hblr/wp-content/uploads/sites/87/2025/03/05_HLB_15_1_Verstein217-282.pdf].
Look at the infrastructure. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 3 is explicit about “Improper Business Practices and Personal Conflicts of Interest” [acquisition.gov/far/part-3]. The eCFR standards demand that conflicts be avoided [ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200/subpart-D/subject-group-ECFR45ddd4419ad436d/section-200.318]. But these rules mean nothing when the person at the top of the executive branch is the one doing the self-dealing. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ruled on family ties, but they require “hard facts” to prove a conflict, not “innuendo and suspicion” [nichols.law/family-ties-create-contract-conflicts-of-interest-in-federal-acquisition-and-more/]. How many “hard facts” does the Axon trade need to be?
The erosion of trust is the point. It is the weapon. If the public believes everyone is corrupt, they stop complaining. It is a wear down technique. The administration is banking on that apathy. They are using the office to enrich the family dynasty, daring anyone to stop them. The whistleblower protections exist, but whistleblowers who report DOGE abuses are being retaliated against [whistleblower.org/blog/powerful-whistleblower-testimony-at-democratic-shadow-hearing/]. The House Oversight Committee is busy investigating the Bidens, a classic projection move [oversight.house.gov/landing/biden-family-investigation/].
The conclusion is ugly but unavoidable. The Trump family has operationalized the presidency as a venture capital fund. The trades, the API, the family trust structure—these are not errors. They are features. The American public is not being governed; it is being farmed for data and contracts. The only question left is whether the enforcement apparatus, which has been thoroughly neutered, will ever wake up. Don’t hold your breath.
