White House Allegedly Cautions Employees on Insider Trading Amid Lawmaker Scrutiny

(SeaPRwire) –   The White House is said to have issued an email to all staff cautioning them against making trades or bets based on nonpublic information.

Reports of this warning, initially covered by the Wall Street Journal, emerge as Democratic legislators express alarm over potential insider trading, highlighting several lucrative trades and wagers made just before President Donald Trump revealed decisions concerning the U.S. and Israeli conflict with Iran.

The email was allegedly distributed by the White House Management Office on March 24, one day after Trump halted military strikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, pointing to “productive conversations” with Tehran. A surge of trading in futures markets preceded Trump’s Truth Social post after 7 a.m. on March 23.

Per Bloomberg, contracts for at least six million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude oil, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were sold in a two-minute window starting at 6:49 a.m. New York time on the day of Trump’s post. This trading volume was markedly above the average of 700,000 barrels sold in the same period over the prior five trading days, Bloomberg reported.

The email also reportedly touches on wagering through prediction markets, where individuals trade contracts based on future event outcomes. Leading platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi have experienced rapidly growing trading volumes in recent years, particularly around high-profile events like the 2024 presidential election and Trump’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January. This sector is relatively nascent compared to conventional financial markets.

On March 23, Senators Adam Schiff (D, Calif.) and John Curtis (R, Utah) proposed a bill to prohibit prediction markets from offering contracts that mimic sports bets or casino games. Soon after, Kalshi and Polymarket announced they would implement new safeguards against insider trading. Kalshi, which is federally overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), stated it would forbid political candidates from trading on their own campaigns and bar individuals involved in college or professional sports from trading on those sports.

Polymarket said it would expressly prohibit users from trading on contracts where they might possess insider knowledge or could influence the result. Polymarket was banned from serving U.S. customers in 2022 but returned to the U.S. with a limited launch in late 2025 after buying a CFTC-licensed exchange. Polymarket also operates a global, cryptocurrency-based platform that handles most of its activity and falls outside CFTC regulation.

On April 7, a minimum of 50 newly created Polymarket accounts made large bets predicting a U.S.-Iran cease-fire just before Trump announced the agreement on Truth Social around 6:30 p.m. ET. These wagers, which yielded profits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, were placed even as Trump had been intensifying threats against Iran, cautioning that “a whole civilization will die.” Iran had also given no indication of plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial global energy trade route militarized by Iran since the war began.

“President Trump has been crystal clear: while he seeks a strong and profitable stock market for everyone, members of Congress and other government officials should be prohibited from using nonpublic information for financial benefit,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told media outlets in a statement. “The only special interest that will ever guide President Trump is the best interest of the American people.”

“All federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit. However, any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting,” Ingle added.

No evidence has surfaced of information leaks or of White House staff profiting from insider trading.

Still, several lawmakers have raised alarms about atypical trading. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D, Conn.) sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain its inability to police trades involving U.S. national security issues. Blumenthal referenced the April 7 trades.

“These repeated, illicit bets raise significant concerns about the mishandling of confidential information on Polymarket, and calls into question whether it is taking adequate steps to prevent, deter, and report national security leaks and gambling over matters of life-and-death,” Blumenthal wrote.

Last month, Blumenthal, together with Senator Andy Kim (D, N.J.), introduced legislation aimed at regulating prediction markets, including a ban on listings connected to war, death, and military action.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers also put forward the “Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act” in the House on March 25. The act would ban congressional members, the President, executive branch officials, and their families from trading on prediction markets linked to political events.

Representative Ritchie Torres (D, N.Y.) sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC urging them to probe the trading that occurred minutes before Trump’s March 23 announcement. The congressman told Bloomberg the “sheer speed, scale and structure of the trade” seemed suspicious.

“What kind of trader would make a massive trade at 6:49 a.m., 15 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement with billions of dollars at stake and without a hedge?” Torres posted on X on Wednesday. “The only plausible answer to that question is an insider trader. Any other alternative is a statistical impossibility.”

TIME has contacted the White House, SEC, CFTC, Polymarket, and Kalshi for comment.