President Donald Trump was fined for late disclosure of tens of millions of dollars in stock trades.
Under federal law, the president is required to disclose stock transactions exceeding $1,000 within 45 days of the trade, a requirement the 79-year-old president reportedly did not meet.
According to a Washington Post analysis of financial disclosure forms released Thursday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, the president was fined $200 in both March and August for failing to report stock transactions on time.
Overall, Trump disclosed at least $220 million in financial transactions earlier this year, including trades in securities tied to major U.S. companies.
The move, which is widely unpopular among the U.S. public—88 percent of whom oppose public officials trading stocks while in office—becomes even more controversial given that presidents are expected to avoid any appearance of benefiting personally from inside knowledge or government decisions.
Meanwhile, according to disclosures, Trump bought Nvidia stock on February 10, days before it announced a major deal with Meta, after which the company’s shares rose around 2.5 percent, The Post reported.
Trump also reportedly sold between $5 million and $25 million worth of Microsoft and Amazon shares in February, then went on to buy millions more in March, shortly before the Pentagon announced plans to use their technology in classified computer networks.
When reached for comment, the White House referred inquiries to the Trump Organization.
“Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” Kimberly Benza, director of executive operations and communications at the Trump Organization, said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
Trump’s finances and business dealings are primarily managed by his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who oversee the Trump Organization.
Since Trump’s return to office, business at the Trump Organization has been booming, with an expansion into cryptocurrency and international real estate licensing in the Middle East and Asia.
On Tuesday, the Daily Beast exclusively revealed that a new real estate project, Trump Tower Tbilisi in Georgia, which expands the first family’s $2.7 billion property empire, is receiving support from a company linked to a sanctioned pro-Kremlin billionaire and another whose founder was investigated over alleged ties to Russian organized crime.
The New Yorker reported in August that the Trump family is expected to increase its wealth by roughly $3.4 billion by the end of the president’s second term. Eric, 41, is now the richest of Trump’s children, with an estimated net worth of $400 million, according to Forbes.
Trump’s assets are also managed by his children, in a setup that differs from the blind trusts typically used by other presidents, where investments are placed under independent control without the officeholder’s knowledge or input, raising questions about how much visibility or influence he may still retain over his holdings.
