Eight Democratic senators on Tuesday called on federal regulators to investigate Carl Icahn, President Donald Trump's special adviser on regulatory reform, for possible insider trading and market manipulation related to renewable energy credits.
In a letter sent to the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Environmental Protection Agency, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts; Debbie Stabenow, Michigan; Tom Carper, Delaware; Sherrod Brown, Ohio; Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island; Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin; Tammy Duckworth, Illinois; and Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota, called on them to scrutinize Mr. Icahn's renewable energy credit trading as the majority owner of CVR Energy and his recommendation as Mr. Trump's adviser to make changes to the renewable fuel credit program. Those changes, they claim, drove down prices that later benefited Mr. Icahn's company.
“We have no way of knowing at this time whether Mr. Icahn made any of his renewable fuel credit trades or decisions about trades based on material, non-public information or otherwise manipulated the market,” the senators said in the letter, which called the publicly available evidence “troubling.”
Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Icahn in December to address excessive regulation, saying he was “innately able to predict the future, especially having to do with finances and economies.”
The letter is available on Ms. Warren's website.
