Trump’s Stock Buys Before NVIDIA and Tesla Posts Fuel Ethics Fight

President Donald Trump bought stock in NVIDIA, Tesla and Apple, then praised all three companies on Truth Social within days, according to a CNN investigation published Thursday. The pattern repeated at least 44 times across 21 companies last year, the network’s analysis of his financial disclosures found.

Trump broke with five decades of presidential practice by refusing to place his assets in a blind trust. That decision now collides with his own agenda. It is the single biggest snag holding up a bipartisan crypto bill he wants signed before the Senate leaves for its August recess.

A Pattern in 21 Companies

CNN used artificial intelligence to cross-check Trump’s Truth Social posts against the stock trades listed in his annual financial disclosure, then had reporters manually confirm hundreds of the flagged matches by hand. The result: at least 44 stock purchases across 21 companies in the week before Trump posted something complimentary about that firm, its executives or its products.

NVIDIA is the clearest example. Early in April 2025, Trump’s accounts bought between $200,000 and $500,000 of the chipmaker’s stock. On April 15, he told his more than nine million Truth Social followers that “all necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered” to NVIDIA and similar companies building AI supercomputers in the United States, without mentioning the purchase he’d made days earlier.

A separate, less publicized trade shows the same rhythm. On August 18, 2025, Trump’s accounts bought between $5 million and $25 million each in Apple, Microsoft and NVIDIA stock, around the time his administration finalized a deal letting NVIDIA and rival AMD sell chips to China in exchange for a 15% cut of the revenue to the U.S. government.

CNN’s analysis found the same mechanics working in reverse, too: purchases followed by criticism rather than praise, which suggests the posting habit tracks his portfolio broadly rather than boosting any single stock on purpose.

Did Trump Break the Law by Trading These Stocks?

No evidence has surfaced that Trump’s trades violated federal securities law, and CNN found nothing showing he personally directed the purchases or the government decisions that followed them. Ethics specialists say the deeper problem isn’t any single trade. It’s a structure that lets the president see what he owns even though he can’t place the orders himself.

Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor, said Trump likely knows what his accounts hold and could reasonably guess how his own public statements move those holdings. Dan Greenberg, a senior legal fellow at the Cato Institute who advised the Labor Department during Trump’s first term, called the arrangement “an ethics disaster.”

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, called the combination of posting and trading “a case study in presidential conflicts of interest.” He added that the setup produces “a slow chipping away” of public trust even if Trump never personally directs a single trade.

The White House rejects that framing entirely. A Trump Organization spokesperson said “neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments.” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly added that Trump’s assets are “held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions.”

Profits for him and his billionaire friends, higher prices for you.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, posted the reaction hours after CNN’s findings went public.

The Billion-Dollar Disclosure Behind the Anger

Much of the outrage traces back to a single document. Trump’s 2025 annual financial disclosure, filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, ran 927 pages and showed $1.4 billion in crypto earnings for the year, more than his real estate and licensing income combined.

The single largest line item was a $636 million licensing deal tied to his TRUMP memecoin, launched days before his second inauguration. Another several hundred million came from his stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture he co-founded with sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley told NBC News in a comparison of the 927-page filing that Obama’s final disclosure ran eight pages and Biden’s ran eleven.

Trump has defended the numbers by pointing to broader market gains. “You know why I’m profiting, because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting,” he told reporters after the disclosure’s release.

Five Decades of Blind Trusts End Here

Every president going back at least 50 years who owned individual stocks or businesses put those assets in a blind trust, meaning they didn’t know which specific holdings they had. Trump’s setup is different. His brokers hold full authority over trading and Trump’s family can’t request or place trades directly, but nothing stops Trump from later learning exactly what his managers bought or sold.

The scale is enormous either way. Trump sent more than 6,000 Truth Social posts last year, while his money managers made more than 20,000 stock purchases or sales over the same stretch. The vast majority of those trades were never followed by a related post, which is the main fact the White House leans on when it insists there is no pattern to worry about.

Trump Media, the company that owns Truth Social and counts the Trump family as its largest shareholder, added a new wrinkle this week. It announced a real-time data feed for institutional traders launching August 1, giving paying Wall Street firms millisecond-level access to posts from the platform’s top accounts, Trump’s included.

The Ethics Clause Now Blocking Trump’s Own Bill

The bill at the center of the fight is the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, a crypto market structure bill that would settle which federal regulator oversees which digital assets. The House passed its version last summer by a lopsided 294-134 margin. The Senate Banking Committee advanced its own version in May, 15-9, with Democrats Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland crossing over to join Republicans. It has sat on the Senate calendar since June 1, waiting for a floor vote.

Democratic senators Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, Jeff Merkley and Kirsten Gillibrand have made clear they won’t supply votes without an ethics clause covering the president himself.

• A ban on the president, the vice president and members of Congress issuing, sponsoring or profiting from digital assets while in office.
• An extension of that ban to spouses and children, not just the officials themselves.
• Enhanced disclosure requirements layered on top of any ownership ban.

Republicans have pushed back, arguing that ethics rules belong in dedicated legislation rather than a market structure bill, and that Trump has acted only in the public’s interest. Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse had already cheered the bill’s momentum during a June deadline crunch, before the ethics fight resurfaced as the last major obstacle.

• Democratic negotiators – Murphy, Van Hollen, Merkley and Gillibrand say the bill is worthless unless it bars the president and his family from profiting off an industry his own administration regulates.
• The White House and Senate Republicans – argue ethics language doesn’t belong in a market structure bill and that Trump has no conflicts of interest to address.
• Industry groups – including the Blockchain Association, warn that a prolonged fight over Trump’s holdings risks ceding ground to overseas crypto regulators while the U.S. waits.

A Text Without Democrats

Trump sat down with Senate Republicans, including Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, at the White House on Thursday afternoon to discuss the bill’s path forward. Democrats were not invited. Moreno told reporters Republicans would release updated bill text right after the meeting. “We’ll do that right after the meeting,” he said.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, one of the two Democrats who voted the bill out of committee, said the version being presented still lacks meaningful ethics reforms. Earlier closed-door talks had already collapsed once, in June, after Republicans and the White House withdrew a plan letting state attorneys general sue over failures to enforce ethics rules on the president. Republicans had also floated impeachment as the remedy for any presidential ethics violation, an offer Democrats rejected as insufficient.

Prediction markets put the odds of the bill becoming law this year at roughly 41%, reflecting how unsettled the timeline remains. The Senate’s current work period ends August 7, and the House Financial Services Committee’s Digital Assets Subcommittee is holding its own field hearing on the bill today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Did CNN’s Stock-and-Post Investigation Find?

CNN found at least 44 stock purchases across 21 companies in the week before Trump posted something favorable about the firm. Separately, its analysis found 17 instances across eight companies where Trump bought stock and then posted something critical rather than complimentary about the same firm, suggesting the posting habit tracks his broader portfolio rather than any single position.

What Is a Blind Trust, and Why Doesn’t Trump Use One?

A blind trust hands assets to an independent trustee who buys and sells without informing the owner of the specifics, so the owner genuinely doesn’t know what they hold. Trump’s accounts are discretionary rather than blind: brokers control the trades and his family can’t direct them, but the annual disclosure still reveals exactly what was bought and sold, which is how CNN’s investigation was possible at all.

What Else Is Holding Up the CLARITY Act Besides Ethics?

Ethics isn’t the bill’s only snag. Law enforcement groups, including the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Fraternal Order of Police and the National District Attorneys’ Association, have separately raised objections to a section shielding software developers from liability, a dispute the White House Crypto Council tried to mediate with those groups earlier this month.

How Would Violations of an Ethics Provision Even Be Enforced?

That question has already broken one round of talks. Negotiators discussed letting state attorneys general sue over enforcement failures, but Republicans and the White House withdrew that option in June. Republicans then floated impeachment as the remedy for a presidential ethics violation, which Democratic negotiators rejected as an unrealistic substitute for real enforcement teeth.

When Could the Senate Actually Vote on the Bill?

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he intends to bring the CLARITY Act to the floor before the chamber’s work period ends August 7, though he hasn’t committed to an exact date. The House passed its version of the bill exactly one year ago today. The Senate still hasn’t voted.