Attorney General Pam Bondi sold $1 million to $5 million worth of shares in President Trump’s media company last month on the same day that he announced expansive tariffs that led to a stock market rout, according to disclosure filings.
Ms. Bondi, whose political and financial fortunes have been greatly enhanced by her association with Mr. Trump, authorized the transaction on April 2, the day the White House unveiled its shock-and-awe levies against American trading partners, according to a report she filed with the Office of Government Ethics last week.
The stock market plummeted on news of the announcement, depressing the share price of Trump Media.
The sale of the shares was expected, and the disclosure form did not include details of the transaction, including specific timing or the number of shares Ms. Bondi had traded, just broad ranges of their value. As part of an ethics agreement she signed before her confirmation, Ms. Bondi agreed to unload the stocks within 90 days of her swearing-in in early February, meaning she had until early May.
The trade had a negligible impact on her finances, whatever her reason for its timing.
The company’s stock price lost about 15 percent of its value in the days after the tariff announcement. But it bounced back after Mr. Trump retreated from his original plan in the face of a backlash that sent his approval ratings plummeting.
By law, federal officials are barred from using inside information about government or private-sector actions to enrich themselves. In practice, such cases are rare and difficult to prove and while Ms. Bondi’s timing was notable, Mr. Trump had made it clear he intended to impose strict tariffs to address the nation’s trade imbalances.
A spokesman for Mr. Bondi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The stock sale, posted on the ethics office website, was earlier reported by ProPublica.
This is not the first time that the finances of Ms. Bondi, a former two-term Florida attorney general, have been closely intertwined with Mr. Trump. She made at least $3 million from the merger that formed Trump Media, the parent company of the Truth Social platform, for consulting work, according to financial disclosures she filed during her confirmation hearings this year.
As part of the earlier filings, Ms. Bondi disclosed that she still held $2 million to $10 million in Trump Media stock, suggesting that her sale of shares in April could be on the higher end of the $1 million to $5 million range.
In addition, Ms. Bondi was paid a six-figure retainer by a legal policy nonprofit associated with Mr. Trump and received more than $1 million a year as a lobbyist with Ballard Partners, a firm with close ties to Mr. Trump and his allies.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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