Just two days before launching an effort to slash red tape for commercial space transportation, President Donald Trump last month purchased up to $5 million of bonds issued by SpaceX, a major federal contractor run by Elon Musk, according to ethics filings made public on Thursday.
The SpaceX bond buy was among 517 trades Trump made in August, transactions that spotlight conflict of interest concerns that have hovered over his presidency.
Beyond SpaceX debt, Trump purchased up to $25 million of Meta shares, up to $6 million of Microsoft stock and a smaller amount of Oracle shares, filings show.
Those trades occurred weeks before Trump convened Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other AI leaders for a White House summit. Notably, Trump forcefully pushed back on calls for a regulatory crackdown to address safety fears, opting for a lighter touch instead.
“There is a conflict of interest. I’m not saying he’s doing anything illegal, but this really gives the appearance of corruption,” Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told CNN on Thursday.
Painter, now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, noted that the president, vice president and members of Congress are not subject to federal conflict of interest laws.
The White House insists Trump was not personally involved in the latest flurry of trades.
“President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to CNN. “All holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.”
Ingle added that neither Trump nor “any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”
“All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest,” the White House spokesperson said.
However, the timing of the large-scale purchases of Meta and SpaceX securities are noteworthy. The filings indicate that on August 18, Trump purchased between $1,000,001 and $5 million of senior unsecured SpaceX bonds due July 2031 paying a 5.35% interest rate.
Two days later, the White House announced Trump signed a national security presidential memorandumaimed at accelerating the “golden age” of America’s space transportation.
SpaceX stands to gain from the new policy, which aims to enable more than 1,000 launches and reentries on American soil annually by 2030 in part by expediting permitting and environmental review.
Asked how he would have advised Bush about making a similar purchase of securities in a federal contractor, Painter said: “No effing way. Don’t buy the bonds. Don’t do that.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told CNN in a statement: “Rather than bringing down the cost of gas and groceries, President Trump is using his office to enrich himself. That’s corruption, plain and simple.”
“It’s long past time for Congress to act and ban stock ownership and trading by members of Congress and the president,” Warren said
By CNN
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