Eric Trump says family assets are in a 'blind trust' invested in 'broad market indexes' — but Trump's own disclosure lists 3,642 individual trades

Trump is the first sitting president in modern history to disclose this volume of individual securities trading while in office. Since Lyndon Johnson pioneered the use of a presidential blind trust in 1963, modern presidents have placed their assets in a blind trust managed by independent trustees, held them in index funds and Treasuries, or — in Jimmy Carter's case — liquidated their assets entirely. Earlier presidents weren't required to file periodic transaction reports like this one, so part of the contrast is structural. (2)

The disclosure has drawn responses from the Trump family and members of Congress. The president's own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who has been publicly calling for a ban on congressional stock trading since August 2025, has not addressed it.

What's in the filing

The Office of Government Ethics released two Form 278-T reports covering Jan. 1 through March 31, 2026. The 113-page filing logs 3,642 individual transactions across 90 days, roughly 58 trades per market day, with 2,345 purchases and 1,296 sales. Cumulative value falls between $220 million and $750 million; OGE filings report broad ranges, not exact figures. (1)(2)

The pace is a sharp departure from earlier in the term, when Trump's portfolio was concentrated in municipal and corporate bonds, including more than $337 million in bond purchases reported in prior filings. A Financial Times analysis of weekly transaction volume shows the activity barely registering through 2025 before exploding in the first quarter of 2026. (3)

According to NOTUS reporting on the filings, the timing of several trades coincided with administration policy decisions. The OGE filings do not specify whether Trump, his family, or third-party brokers placed the trades; the Trump Organization has previously said all trading decisions are made by independent managers without family input. The trades NOTUS flagged include:

• Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA): 15 separate transactions, per Rep. Don Beyer's review of the filing, including a $500,000 to $1 million purchase on Jan. 6 — one week before the Commerce Department approved the sale of certain Nvidia chips to China on Jan. 13. A second purchase of $1 million to $5 million was recorded on Feb. 10, a week before Nvidia announced a major processing-power deal with Meta. (4)(5)
• AMD (NASDAQ:AMD): A $50,000 to $100,000 purchase on Jan. 6, followed by Commerce Department authorization on Jan. 13 for AMD to sell chips to Chinese customers. Total AMD purchases for the quarter: at least $740,000. (4)
• Oracle (NYSE:ORCL): Multi-million-dollar purchases in early 2026, during a period when the Trump administration was working on a deal allowing Oracle to continue operating TikTok in the U.S. (6)
• Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR): Trump bought between $247,000 and $630,000 across the quarter, including at least seven purchases of Palantir stock in March alone totaling up to $530,000. Palantir's federal contracts nearly doubled in the same window, from $541 million in FY2024 to $970.5 million in FY2025. Weeks after the March purchases, Trump endorsed Palantir on Truth Social by ticker symbol — the first sitting president to do so. The stock briefly ticked up roughly 3% before closing lower at $128.06. (13)
• Dell (NYSE:DELL): A $1 million to $5 million purchase of Dell Class C shares on Feb. 10, roughly three months before Trump publicly praised Dell hardware at a White House event in early May. The stock rose roughly 12% on the day of the endorsement. The Dell family separately pledged $6.25 billion to the federal Trump Accounts program in December 2025 while continuing to hold significant Dell stock.

The filings also list trades in Axon (NASDAQ:AXON), Boeing (NYSE:BA), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) — companies with significant federal contracts or active regulatory exposure. (4)

The Washington Post reported on May 15 that Trump missed the STOCK Act's 45-day filing deadline on a separate set of Microsoft and Amazon trades worth tens of millions of dollars and was fined $200. A handwritten notation on the cover page of the disclosure reads "Filer paid late fees." (7)

‘Blind trust’ or active portfolio?

On May 15, Eric Trump — executive vice president of the Trump Organization and one of the trustees managing the family's assets — responded on X to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, who had raised national-security concerns over the Nvidia trades given Trump's recent trip to China with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Eric Trump's response:

"All of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes. To suggest that individual stocks are being bought or sold, at the discretion of any member of the Trump family, would be a lie and blatantly false. Using a silly example, if you buy the 'Schwab 1000,' you will get some exposure to Nvidia — as well as a 1,000 other U.S. companies large- and mid-cap stocks. It's completely disingenuous to represent anything to the contrary. Please be better than this..." (8)

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Virginia, responded directly on X, linking to the OGE disclosure: "Outright lies. Trump's assets aren't in a blind trust, and he bought and sold individual Nvidia stock in 15 separate transactions totaling millions of dollars. That's what Trump's financial disclosure — which has his signature — says. See for yourself." (9)

The disclosure lists individual companies by name, not the broad-market indexes Eric Trump described. A holding in the Schwab 1000 ETF would appear in OGE filings as a single line item, not 3,642 individual trades. The framing also conflicts with the White House's own prior statement on the matter: in January, after Trump's bond-heavy 2025 disclosures became public, a spokesperson told CNN that "all holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000," and that "neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold." (14)

A White House spokesperson told NOTUS this week that Trump's assets are in a trust "managed by his children" and that "there are no conflicts of interest," and deferred follow-up questions to the Trump Organization. (4) The OGE filings do not specify who at the third-party institutions directed the trades or the basis for each transaction. Some are flagged "unsolicited" in the documents, meaning the broker did not initiate them — though OGE has not clarified what that designation means in this context. (5)

The administration has also addressed the issue internally. On March 24, the White House Management Office sent a staff-wide email warning employees against using nonpublic information to place trades in financial markets or on prediction platforms, calling it a "criminal offense." (13)

The Treasury Secretary's position

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been publicly calling for a single-stock trading ban on members of Congress since August 2025. "I am going to start pushing for this single-stock trading ban, because it is the credibility of the House and the Senate," Bessent said on Bloomberg TV last year. "You look at some of these eye-popping returns — whether it is Rep. Pelosi, Sen. Wyden — every hedge fund would be jealous of them. The American people deserve better than this." (10)