Trump Administration Official’s Investment In Equity Stake Foreign Mining Corporation Reeks Of Corruption
Tip-Of-Iceberg Under Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Corporate Socialism and Burgum’s Non-Transparent Interior Department
HELENA, MT – As the Trump administration engages in socialism for big corporations and the ultra-wealthy, propping up mining companies on one hand and fast-tracking public land extraction and mining on the other, explosive new reporting raises more questions about whether members of this administration are engaging in unethical and potentially illegal insider trading, and profiting at taxpayers’ expense.
Before the Defense Department (DoD) announced that the federal government would assume an equity stake in Mp Materials Corp. (Mp), company shares were valued at about thirty dollars. After the initial DoD equity stake announcement, and another from the Pentagon announcing a $150 million direct loan to Mp, the price of a share skyrocketed over 250%. Only then did the top Trump official sell their Mp shares to comply with ethics laws.
The Trump administration plan to acquire more ‘equity stakes’ in foreign mining companies has been labeled as corporate socialism and raises numerous legal and ethical questions about Trump, his cabinet, political hires, family members, and connected political allies enriching themselves.
These revelations come on the heels of fresh reporting confirming that anti-public land zealot Karen Budd-Falen, one of Doug Burgum’s key public land sell-off cronies at the Interior Department, is also engaging in unethical and potentially illegal conflicts of interests. Budd-Falen, the third highest ranking official at the Department, still holds tens of thousands of dollars in Big Oil stocks.
Burgum himself has close connections to major oil and gas executives, like Harold Hamm, and he even personally received oil royalties as governor of North Dakota. It remains an open question as to whether Burgum’s cronies, many of whom have yet to release financial disclosures and ethics agreements, along with Doug himself, are profiting from private investments while in their official government roles. There has yet to be a single congressional inquiry or oversight hearing in either Republican-controlled chamber regarding the Trump administration’s ties to these foreign mining companies they are taking an equity stake in.
Read more below:
New York Times: Stephen Miller’s Stock Sale Raises Questions, Ethics Experts Say
Stephen Miller, a top adviser to President Trump, sold shares worth $50,000 to $100,000 in the mining company MP Materials following a July announcement of a lucrative deal between the Las Vegas company and the Trump administration, government filings show.
The sale came one month after the Trump administration announced an extraordinary series of measures to support MP Materials, which produces valuable rare earth minerals and magnets. The deal, which included the government purchasing shares in the company and committing to buy its products, led MP Materials’ share price to skyrocket.
The company’s stock price rose to $45.23 on July 10, the day the deal was announced, from $30.03 a share on July 9. The share price climbed to $76.58 on Aug. 14, the date Mr. Miller sold his shares — a historic high. The stock peaked at just under $99 on Oct. 14, after the company reported earnings. It closed at $59.82 on Tuesday.
Mr. Miller’s sale, which has not been previously reported, was part of a collection of trades that he made in August when he sold stakes in nearly two dozen companies. That included others in which the Trump administration subsequently committed to take an equity stake, including Intel and Westinghouse.
Ethics experts said that the sales raised a number of questions and concerns, and that they could have been done more quickly to resolve any apparent conflicts of interest, given the Trump administration’s own equity stake.
“[T]his is a large investment in an obscure company that just happened to massively benefit from the unusual interventions of the Trump administration,” Mr. Weissman added. “At minimum, it’s a really bad look.”
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