Mick Mulvaney dumped over $500K in stocks while Trump promised the economy was 'doing fantastically': report

According to a new report from The Daily Beast, President Trump's then acting-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney unloaded hundreds of thousands of dollars of stocks as the coronavirus pandemic began to tank the stock market back in March.

Mulvaney "sold between $215,000 and $550,000 in holdings in three mutual funds on March 4, according to ethics paperwork he submitted late last month. Holdings in each of the three funds are made up almost entirely of U.S. stocks," the Beast reports. The sales mark a stark contrast to Trump's claims that the economy was "doing fantastically" at the time.

"By that point, markets had already started to tank on fears of the worsening coronavirus outbreak," the Beast's Lachlan Markay writes. "But March 4 saw a surge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average that was attributed, in part, to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s strong showing in Super Tuesday primaries the day before. The day after Mulvaney sold those holdings, the values of all three of the mutual funds he offloaded plummeted, though they have since regained much or all of their lost value."

Markay is careful to point out that there's no evidence the stock dumps were a result of information Mulvaney obtained through his official duties.

"Mulvaney’s sales nevertheless show a striking divergence in the White House’s official position on the strength of the U.S. economy at the time and the private investment decisions of the president’s top aide," he writes.

Read the full report over at The Daily Beast.