Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million in stock on the same day Donald Trump announced his sweeping tariff regime in early April.
The trade, which was revealed in Bondi’s required federal disclosures, has raised eyebrows for its size and timing.
The stock sold was in the president’s own company Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (TMTG), which owns the Truth Social network, according to a copy of the disclosure.
Although it is unclear exactly what time Bondi sold her Trump stock, the president did not announce his tariff plan until after the U.S. stock markets had already closed.
It is not marked on the disclosures whether the attorney general sold before or after the public tariff announcement on April 2.
That day, the 78-year-old Republican president rolled out a flat 10 percent tariff on all U.S. trading partners and ‘reciprocal’ rates on some specific bad actors, which could ratchet up the tariff rates to 50 percent in some cases.
The Trump stock price plummeted around 10 percent before surging back.
Bondi sold her shares at one of the worst stock prices the company has had this year, around $18 per share.
The company was trading around $40 per share in early January but has since slid, reaching a low around $16.60 shortly after the ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcement.
It then recovered and was trading around $25 as of Thursday morning.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 – $5 million in TMTG stock on Liberation Day, her federal disclosures show
Trump’s announcement sent markets into a tailspin and TMTG lost around 10 percent of its value after Liberation Day before running up to around $25 as of Thursday
The timing of the trade has raised eyebrows among some online
Financial disclosures show Bondi was awarded $3 million shares from her involvement with a company that later merged with TMTG.
Since she sold, the share price has shot up around 36 percent.
Regardless, the stock sale had to occur as part of Bondi’s ethics obligations as the attorney general.
She had a 90-0day deadline to do so which would have ended in early May, though the Cabinet member sold a month early.
The attorney general is not suspected of any wrongdoing, although some on social media slammed her for the trade.
‘The timing raises serious ethical questions,’ Ed Krassenstein posted on X. ‘The Trump administration corruption continues.’
More sympathetic posters on X pushed back by pointing out Bondi lost money on the transaction.
Bondi had stock in Truth Social’s parent company TMGT because one of her holdings was acquired by the Trump business through a merger deal
The tariffs for some counties reached almost 50 percent
The U.S. stock market was in flux for days after the announcement
It came as renewed scrutiny of politicians’ stock trading has recently invigorated Congress.
Trump said earlier this year he would ‘absolutely’ sign a bill to ban lawmakers from trading stocks while in office if Congress sends him such a measure.
The top Republican in Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson, said this week that his chamber ‘probably should’ enact such a rule, adding he is ‘in favor’ of the ban.
Multiple bills have been introduced to ban the practice in the House and Senate this year, though the timing of when one may come up for a vote is unclear.
The Department of Justice did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.