Billionaire Donald Trump bought up to $5 million of Elon Musk’s SpaceX bonds

American billionaire Donald Trump’s investment portfolio bought between $1 million and $5 million of bonds issued by Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Aug. 18, two days before the president signed a memorandum aimed at accelerating commercial rocket launches, according to financial disclosures made public on Thursday and reported by CNN.

The SpaceX purchase was one of 517 trades recorded in August. The filings also show purchases of up to $25 million of Meta Platforms shares, up to $6 million of Microsoft and a smaller amount of Oracle, all in the weeks before Trump hosted Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and other chief executives at the White House on Sept. 29 to sign a voluntary AI safety accord, and before he awarded Musk the National Medal of Science on Thursday.

The bonds are senior unsecured SpaceX notes due July 2031 paying 5.35%, part of the $25 billion inaugural debt offering the company placed this year to fund AI computing. On Aug. 20 the White House announced a national security presidential memorandum to usher in a “golden age” of American space transportation, with a target of more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year on U.S. soil by 2030, in part by expediting permitting and environmental review. SpaceX, which conducts the large majority of American launches, stands to benefit most.

The White House said the president had no hand in any of it. “President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” spokesperson Davis Ingle told CNN. “All holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.” Neither Trump nor any family member “has any ability to direct, influence or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested,” Ingle said. “There are no conflicts of interest.”

Critics did not accept that. “There is a conflict of interest. I’m not saying he’s doing anything illegal, but this really gives the appearance of corruption,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House and now a law professor at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. Asked how he would have advised Bush on a similar purchase in a federal contractor, he said: “No effing way. Don’t buy the bonds.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Trump was “using his office to enrich himself” and renewed her call for Congress to ban stock trading by members and the president.

The president, vice president and members of Congress are exempt from the federal conflict-of-interest statute that binds other officials, as Painter noted. Trump has never placed his assets in a blind trust; his holdings are managed in discretionary accounts, and the disclosures are the public’s only view of what they contain.

SpaceX’s own week has been eventful on the credit side. The company is reported to be in early talks on a further $40 billion of debt to buy Nvidia chips, a plan that on Wednesday pushed the cost of insuring its bonds to a record. The notes Trump’s portfolio holds trade in that market.

For Musk, the disclosure adds one more line to the ledger of his restored relationship with the president: a $100 million midterm pledge, a Pentagon study, a medal, and now a creditor in the Oval Office, by the White House’s account, through no choice of either man.