The director of Nottingham

Robinhood — the financial services company, not the guy with arrows — is a big deal in the Trump administration.

The company is working with the Treasury Department to launch and maintain an app for the government’s new Trump Accounts program, which aims to provide children with tax-deferred investment accounts.

And it’s a key player in the Trump administration’s “US Tech Force” initiative, which endeavors to draft skilled private sector workers into government service on a temporary basis.

U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor is a particular Robinhood fan.

He counts it among tech firms you “know and love,” even name-dropping it during an interview on popular technology news show TBPN.

But as I exclusively report in NOTUS, Kupor has another tie to Robinhood:

What Kupor didn’t say: He has maintained massive personal financial interests in Robinhood. And last month, the OPM director exercised stock call options and sold seven figures worth of his Robinhood shares, according to new federal ethics records reviewed by NOTUS.

Kupor’s Robinhood stock sales on June 18 are together worth between $1.7 million and $3.5 million, a disclosure document filed with the Office of Government Ethics indicates.

They came on a day when Robinhood’s stock price closed at $108.15 per share — up significantly from the year-to-date low closing price of $65.16 on March 30.

In recent days, Robinhood stock has generally traded between $85 and $95 per share.

Does Kupor’s personal investment in Robinhood conflict with his public duties?

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Also from my NOTUS article:

In an ethics agreement Kupor signed last year prior to his Senate confirmation, he agreed to take steps to “avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest” and divest of dozens of personal investments. He also resigned from various corporate posts and positions.

In a statement to NOTUS, OPM spokesperson McLaurine Pinover said Kupor “went through a full financial review with [the Office of Government Ethics] prior to his confirmation hearing and agreed to all divestitures and recusals proposed by OGE. Neither Okta nor Robinhood were suggested by OGE as divestitures since OPM has no financial relationship with either company.”

The OGE declined to comment on Kupor’s personal investments.

The agency’s published “conflicts of interest considerations” guidance states that “an employee who owns stock options is prohibited from participating personally and substantially in any particular matter that the employee knows would have a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of the issuer of the underlying security.”

One person who did have some thoughts is former Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub, who served in that position during President Barack Obama’s second term and the first months of President Donald Trump’s first term.

Shaub and I traded messages, and here’s what he told me about Trump:

“It has seemed to me that the president’s appointees are doing a whole lot of buying and selling investments. That’s not something you saw happening much in the past Democratic or Republican administrations,” Shaub said.

“The problem is that letting presidential appointees play the market is a recipe for disaster,” Shaub added. “There’s no way for the public to know which government decisions are made because they’ll be lucrative for administration officials instead of being made because they’re what’s best for the American people.”

Kupor is not alone among Trump administration officials who’ve made notable personal financial moves while in public service:

They include FBI Director Kash Patel, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Ambassador to Italy Tilman Fertitta, Federal Highway Administration Administrator Sean McMaster, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, former U.S. Agency for Global Media leader Kari Lake, Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Pedro Allende, Environmental Protection Agency Assistant Administrator Douglas Troutman and former Department of Health and Human Services general counsel Mike Stuart.

Read my full article here.