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On March 8, 2026, ProPublica published an investigation revealing that several of the Trump administration's most powerful officials held significant financial interests in the very sectors they were responsible for regulating or overseeing — and that their official actions had consistently benefited those personal holdings. The investigation centered on Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg.
Blanche's disclosures showed cryptocurrency holdings valued between $159,000 and $485,000 — a substantial personal stake in an asset class over which he had exercised extraordinary influence. As Deputy Attorney General, Blanche had overseen the shutdown of federal cryptocurrency enforcement initiatives, effectively removing the regulatory threat that had been the primary check on fraud and manipulation in crypto markets. The direct alignment between his personal financial interests and his official actions represented what ethics experts called one of the most clear-cut conflicts of interest in modern Justice Department history.
Attorney General Bondi's financial disclosures revealed a pattern of well-timed stock trades executed before tariff-driven market drops. The trades, documented in required disclosure filings, showed Bondi selling holdings in advance of policy announcements that drove prices down — a pattern that, while not necessarily illegal, raised serious questions about whether she had access to nonpublic policy information that informed her investment decisions. The appearance of impropriety alone would have triggered ethics investigations in prior administrations.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Feinberg's conflicts ran through his former firm, Cerberus Capital Management, which had won Pentagon contracts since his appointment. ProPublica found that Feinberg had received an extended conflict-of-interest waiver — beyond the standard recusal period — that allowed him to participate in decisions affecting defense contracting even as his former firm benefited from those same decisions. Together, the three cases illustrated a pattern in which the Trump administration's senior officials were not merely failing to avoid conflicts of interest but appeared to be actively profiting from the power of their positions.