On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump halted the ‘reciprocal tariff’ he had introduced for the countries on April 2, the ‘Liberation Day’. However, when the tariffs were put on hold, except for China, stock prices skyrocketed. Adam Schiff, a Democrat Senator from California, called on the Congress to probe whether Donald Trump had resorted to insider trading or market manipulation.

In a video post on X, Schiff questioned Trump’s intentions with the removal of imposed tariffs in an ‘on-again-off-again’ fashion, and a post on Truth Social (Trump’s own social media) he made earlier to that.

“Today, Trump removed many of the tariffs he had imposed in this on again, off again, it must be Wednesday, tariffs are off again kind of policy,” he said.

“This has just wreaked havoc on the markets, of course, but there is another profound danger as well, and that is insider trading within the White House, within the administration,” he alleged.

This was the post on Truth Social by Trump right before he stopped the recently imposed tariff.

DJT is the US stock in NASDAQ for Trump-owned ‘Trump Media & Technology Group Corp’. DJT opened at $16.60 on Wednesday and closed at $21.33, a 28.49% jump in a single day. At 4.35 pm (local time), it went as high as $22.34 (a jump of 34.97%).

Questioning Trump’s actions, Senator Schiff asked, “The question is, who knew what the President was going to do? And did people around the President trade stock, knowing the incredible gyration the market was about to go through? Because look, this is a President who is trading in his own meme coin even as he’s president.”

Further, he questioned Elon Musk’s personal interests and his involvement in the system, saying, “You’ve got people like Elon Musk who are doing their own conflicted self dealing in the administration.” 

“In any administration this corrupt, it is more than necessary to ask, were people personally profiting from insider information while people’s savings, their retirement accounts were being torched?” he asked.

Schiff also alleged that even Trump’s “kids are trading in their own cryptocurrency”.

The Democrat senator said that he would write to the White House demanding answers, even though he was “fully cognizant of the fact that the White House is probably the last place to be forthcoming about this or any other corruption in the administration”. 

“We in Congress need to do more than demand answers,” he said.

In conclusion, he said that the USA has benefitted from the whistleblowers coming forward, and invited them to step forward to speak about the corruption in the system.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Whether people were profiting off the pain of the American people,” he concluded.