Anthony Scaramucci, the SkyBridge Capital co‑founder and former White House communications director, on Friday accused the Trump administration of orchestrating a large-scale insider trading operation tied to a recent foreign‑policy announcement that he says generated as much as $400 million in illicit profits.
In a video posted to X on April 2, Scaramucci laid out a timeline that he said shows concentrated, suspicious trading activity roughly one hour before President Donald Trump announced a five‑day moratorium on strikes against Iran. Scaramucci said traders bought about $1.5 billion in notional S&P E‑mini futures contracts — roughly four to six times normal volumes — and simultaneously purchased some $192 million in crude oil futures. “They made between $300 and $400 million dollars off those trades,” he said, alleging the trades were executed on information available only inside the White House.
Scaramucci also accused Mr. Trump of manufacturing a phone call with an Iranian official to justify the moratorium, saying Iranian authorities denied the purported conversation took place. “These people are making hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars trading on information that only exists inside the most powerful office in the world,” Scaramucci said in the video. “This isn’t politics anymore. This is a financial operation running out of the White House.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Benzinga, which first reported Scaramucci’s allegations. Scaramucci’s post included a brief breakdown of the trades and their timing; he did not identify the individual traders or firms he believes were involved, nor did he present documentary evidence of coordination in the short clip.
The claims add to a series of market anomalies tied to the administration’s foreign‑policy moves that have drawn attention in recent weeks. In March, reports highlighted an unprecedented 24,650 percent spike in SPY call options in roughly 80 minutes after Mr. Trump described the Iran conflict as “very complete.” Separately, scrutiny was also directed at the Pentagon after reporting that a broker linked to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to move millions into defense exchange‑traded funds just weeks before U.S. military operations; the Pentagon denied that reporting as “fabricated.”
Scaramucci’s accusations, coming from a well‑known financial figure and former Trump administration insider, are likely to intensify calls for clarity about market activity around major policy announcements. Officials and markets routinely note that geopolitical statements can move futures and commodity prices; coordinated trading based on nonpublic information, however, would raise legal questions under U.S. insider‑trading and market‑manipulation statutes.
It remains unclear whether federal regulators or law‑enforcement agencies have opened inquiries into the specific trades Scaramucci described. For now, his video functions as the most detailed public allegation tying the April moratorium announcement to unusually large futures and commodity purchases, a claim that the administration has not yet publicly addressed.