1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

As you know Trump made dire threats of revenge bombing against Iran last weekend and then announced a sudden climb-down this past Monday morning, citing productive negotiations as the reason. Both actions affected the market dramatically. Someone knew about this surprising Monday about-face 15 minutes before Trump's Monday announcement: Per CNBC: "At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume, breaking from an otherwise subdued premarket backdrop. With thin liquidity typical of early trading hours, the sudden burst stood out as one of the largest volume moments of the session up to that point. A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading..." Paul Krugman wrote about this, noting similar, but smaller, instances of trades based on insider-knowledge: "large, suspicious moves in the prediction market Polymarket [occurred] before previous attacks on Iran and Venezuela"-- none so large as this however. Thus there is a pattern of people close to Trump profiting by using secret information to reap huge stock market profits. Insider trading is wrong. And illegal. Insider trading based on national security secrets threatens our national security. Paul Krugman explains that it amounts to treason: "think of a more fundamental principle for officials we entrust with important decisions, especially those that involve national security, that they or people they know should not be allowed to exploit their positions for personal gain. Second, financial trading based on what should be closely held secrets reveals information to current or potential foreign adversaries. To exaggerate a bit, but only a bit, who needs to bribe agents within the government, or recruit them with honey traps, when you can infer the same information by keeping track of transactions on futures markets?" At every turn Trump has endangered our national security, stealing classified documents, storing them in a lavatory, showing them to someone on a golf course, and now, most recently, illegally sharing top-secret information about an armed conflict such that someone could profit; thus size of that trade suggests a person acting with confidence in their impunity. Please: Clean this up! Investigate, do oversight, make criminal referrals, and legislate. .