An open letter to the U.S. Congress

Our Markets Aren’t a Casino for Administration Insider Trading!

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I am writing to demand immediate, public action on the pattern of suspicious trading occurring minutes before market-moving presidential announcements on Iran policy. The record is no longer ambiguous: • March 23, 2026: ~$500M in bearish oil futures bets placed roughly 15 minutes before President Trump announced a delay in strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. Trading volume at 6:49 a.m. EST was reportedly nine times normal. • April 7, 2026: ~$950M short position established in oil futures hours before a U.S.-Iran ceasefire announcement. At least 50 newly created Polymarket accounts placed coordinated cease-fire bets the same day. • April 17, 2026: ~$760M bet on falling oil prices placed 20 minutes before Iran announced reopening the Strait of Hormuz. • Most recent: $430M bearish bet on Brent crude executed 15 minutes before the indefinite ceasefire extension, during a low-volume post-settlement window. These are not isolated trades. They are repeated, precisely timed, and structurally inconsistent with legitimate speculation. Rep. Ritchie Torres has already formally requested an SEC/CFTC investigation. Senators Schiff and Curtis introduced bipartisan legislation on prediction-market guardrails. The White House itself issued an internal email on March 24 warning staff against insider trading — an admission that the risk is real and internal. What I am asking of you: 1. Publicly demand that the SEC and CFTC complete and disclose their investigations into these specific trade clusters, with named or unnamed account-level findings. 2. Co-sponsor or vote for legislation closing the prediction-market loophole and strengthening pre-announcement trade surveillance around executive policy decisions. 3. Push for restoration of DOJ Public Integrity Section staffing, which has been reduced from 36 attorneys to 2 — gutting the institutional capacity to prosecute exactly this kind of conduct. 4. Place administration officials with access to military and diplomatic timing under the same blind-trust and disclosure rules currently applied to members of Congress. The integrity of U.S. capital markets is not a partisan asset. It is the single most important reason global capital prices American risk lower than anyone else’s. Every unprosecuted incident compounds the discount we will eventually pay. You may disagree with me on many things. You should not disagree on this. Respectfully, A concerned Constituent

▶ Created on May 7 by New Deal Democrats

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