Abbott, which donated $500,000 to the president’s inaugural fund, faced an investigation stemming from alleged deadly contamination at one of its baby formula plants in Michigan.
President Donald Trump signs a presidential memo in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on June 29, 2026.
(Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Jake Johnson
Jul 02, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
US President Donald Trump last year purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of Abbott Laboratories stock before his Justice Department dropped a years-long criminal investigation into the company, which was accused of misconduct after infant hospitalizations and deaths were linked to one of its baby formula factories.
The stock purchases were revealed in the president’s annual financial disclosure report, which spans 927 pages and shows thousands of trades valued at over $1 billion. Trump’s first purchase of Abbott stock last year was made in late September, and the president bought around $500,000 worth of shares in total in 2025, according to the nonprofit media organization More Perfect Union.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that “top decision makers” at the Department of Justice shut down the criminal investigation into Abbott—which donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund—even though “some prosecutors believed they had evidence to criminally charge the company under a law they have used to pursue other businesses for allegedly selling contaminated foods.”
“Prosecutors had been considering a misdemeanor charge against Abbott for violating the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and a separate count for misleading the government,” the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. “Investigators in early 2022 had found traces of a potentially deadly bacteria at its plant in Sturgis, Michigan, including on equipment very close to infant formula containers—as well as a long list of other problems.”
The Food and Drug Administration received reports of at least nine infant deaths linked to baby formula produced at Abbott’s Sturgis plant, which the company temporarily shut down amid fears of dangerous contamination. The Justice Department launched its investigation into Abbott, the largest infant formula manufacturer in the US, in 2023, under the administration of former President Joe Biden.
Trump’s DOJ has taken a far more lax approach to corporate enforcement, reaching sweetheart settlement deals with companies accused of price-fixing, stifling competition, and other illegal activities.
The Journal reported that the Justice Department and Abbott “reached a settlement to resolve” a separate but related civil lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly “failed to follow manufacturing standards to protect against the risk of contamination.”
“That suit, which was joined by 31 states, alleged that Abbott had a ‘culture of concealment’ at Sturgis and ‘withheld information from FDA related to the presence of microorganisms in the Sturgis facility,’” the Journal observed.
Last April, the investigative outlet ProPublica reported that workers at Abbott’s Sturgis plant—which resumed production in June 2022—said the company was still “engaging in unsanitary practices similar to those that led it to temporarily shut down.”
“Current and former employees told ProPublica that they have seen the plant in Sturgis, Michigan take shortcuts when cleaning manufacturing equipment and testing for microbes,” the outlet reported. “The employees said leaks in the factory are sometimes not fixed, a dangerous problem that can promote bacterial growth. They also said workers at the facility do not always take required swabs to check for pathogens while performing maintenance during production. Supervisors have urged workers to increase production and have retaliated against workers who complained about problems, the employees said.
Abbott, whose stock is down significantly year-to-date but up over the past month, called the ProPublica story “misleading” and impugned the motives of workers who spoke to the outlet.
Trump’s purchase of Abbott stock wasn’t the only buy that preceded significant action by his administration.
“On April 8, 2025, the day before Trump announced the tariff pause, the disclosure shows 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million, one of the largest single-day stock buying sprees disclosed in the filing,” Sludge reported on Wednesday. “The purchases included Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet, each valued as much as $250,000, along with scores of other companies. The S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% the following day when Trump announced the pause, one of the largest single-day gains in the index’s history.”
Fox host warns Trump will pay for his 'breathtaking' corruption
U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to members of the media on board Air Force One en route from Scotland, Britain, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein
U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to members of the media on board Air Force One en route from Scotland, Britain, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein
July 03, 2026
ALTERNET
On Friday, Fox News host and political analyst Brit Hume offered a prediction that President Donald Trump is unlikely to appreciate. If the Democrats come out ahead in the midterms, the chief executive could find himself paying big for his "breathtaking" crypto corruption.
Hume's forecast comes in the wake of the president's 2025 financial disclosures earlier in the week, which revealed that his family raked in a shocking $1 billion from its cryptocurrency ventures while Daddy Trump regulated the market. As Mediate explains, "The filing reported roughly $500 million in income from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded with his sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, along with approximately $635 million from sales of the $TRUMP meme coin through CIC Digital LLC. The disclosure also detailed hundreds of millions of dollars in income from Trump’s real estate holdings and millions more from licensing deals and other business ventures. The president made more than $2 billion overall."
Another Fox News host, John Roberts, called the numbers "eye-popping," prompting Hume to respond, "It is, John, and I think the right word for this is unseemly, for a president to profit while in office.”
He continued, "Now, it’s not fair to say that he profited from the office, although, you know, that’s surely gonna be subject to investigation — particularly if the Democrats get control of one or both branches of Congress. But, if you wanted seemliness in the White House, Donald Trump was not your man, and if you wanted a guy that wasn’t very rich in the White House, he wasn’t your man for that either. The fact is that he’s a very rich guy, and when you hold the kind of holdings he has, you do get richer. This amount from crypto seems breathtaking, but as the point was made by you and [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, not illegal. So, the people that don’t like Trump won’t like this. The people that do like Trump won’t care very much, in my judgement."
Hume is only partly true in regards to that last assertion. While much of MAGA has remained loyal to the president regardless of his financial improprieties, he's had pushback from some high-profile supporters. The New York Post, for example, which is typically complimentary toward Trump, declared that a recent story involving his sons' profiting off a Kazakhstan mining deal their father struck "stinks to high heaven." According to the Post, "The Lutnick [sons of Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick] and Trump boys have been sloshing around in the muck since their dads came to power 18 months ago. They’ve profited handsomely from cryptocurrency deals while the government their fathers control were setting crypto policy.”
On Friday, Fox News host and political analyst Brit Hume offered a prediction that President Donald Trump is unlikely to appreciate. If the Democrats come out ahead in the midterms, the chief executive could find himself paying big for his "breathtaking" crypto corruption.
Hume's forecast comes in the wake of the president's 2025 financial disclosures earlier in the week, which revealed that his family raked in a shocking $1 billion from its cryptocurrency ventures while Daddy Trump regulated the market. As Mediate explains, "The filing reported roughly $500 million in income from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded with his sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, along with approximately $635 million from sales of the $TRUMP meme coin through CIC Digital LLC. The disclosure also detailed hundreds of millions of dollars in income from Trump’s real estate holdings and millions more from licensing deals and other business ventures. The president made more than $2 billion overall."
Another Fox News host, John Roberts, called the numbers "eye-popping," prompting Hume to respond, "It is, John, and I think the right word for this is unseemly, for a president to profit while in office.”
He continued, "Now, it’s not fair to say that he profited from the office, although, you know, that’s surely gonna be subject to investigation — particularly if the Democrats get control of one or both branches of Congress. But, if you wanted seemliness in the White House, Donald Trump was not your man, and if you wanted a guy that wasn’t very rich in the White House, he wasn’t your man for that either. The fact is that he’s a very rich guy, and when you hold the kind of holdings he has, you do get richer. This amount from crypto seems breathtaking, but as the point was made by you and [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, not illegal. So, the people that don’t like Trump won’t like this. The people that do like Trump won’t care very much, in my judgement."
Hume is only partly true in regards to that last assertion. While much of MAGA has remained loyal to the president regardless of his financial improprieties, he's had pushback from some high-profile supporters. The New York Post, for example, which is typically complimentary toward Trump, declared that a recent story involving his sons' profiting off a Kazakhstan mining deal their father struck "stinks to high heaven." According to the Post, "The Lutnick [sons of Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick] and Trump boys have been sloshing around in the muck since their dads came to power 18 months ago. They’ve profited handsomely from cryptocurrency deals while the government their fathers control were setting crypto policy.”
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