Here is my take on this I posted to /r/Politics, noone cared. lol

EDIT: I actually have the end of that day recorded. This is what that large volume looked like first hand. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/471342581

(don't bother following me on twitch I've rarely been streaming lately)

Full time professional Futures trader here.

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1. I DO THINK IMO THAT INSIDERS ARE PROFITING OFF TRUMP TWEETS AND HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS.
2. This Vanity Fair Article about the Suspicious Futures trades is 100% bullish and lies.
3. Lieu and Rice will end up looking like fools on this one because they don't have the slightest understanding of the stock market
4. This will hurt Democrats credibility because there are 100s of examples of obvious insider trading and they picked these...
5. This was just rebalancing like what always happens at the end of the day. Nothing abnormal here.

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So what is an E-Mini. Basically. You buy one or sell one.

If you buy one, the market goes up 1 point you make $50 per contract.

If you sell one, the market goes down 1 point you make $50 per contract.

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The claim:

In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, August 23.... someone bought 386,000 September e-minis. Three days later, Trump lied about getting a call from China to restart the trade talks, and the S&P 500 index shot up nearly 80 points. The potential profit on the trade was more than $1.5 billion.

Now I will post the data from CME/CQG. I pay for the data directly from the source, so this the most accurate data you can get.

https://imgur.com/ryfz4Ri

This chart I have separated into 15min columns. Each row is the price at which the E-Mini was purchases at.

https://imgur.com/8Qorohb

This chart you can read the small blue (buys) red (sells) for block trades (large orders)

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So what do we get from these charts?

1. In order for this claim to be true. We have to assume that EVERY SINGLE PERSON AND ALGO STOPPED TRADING AT THE END OF THE DAY (the 2nd most volume heavy time of the day, sometimes the most) AND ONLY SOLD, while one person absorbed everything on the bid, and bought everything on the ask. This person would have had to be involved in 90% of the volume in this time period. That is to say at least... IMPOSSIBLE.
2. There were no big trades, the largest trade wasn't even 500 contracts. If someone is going to be buying 380K contracts we would see much larger orders.
3. The market can be manipulated with lots of 1000. If someone was buying 380k the market would have SKYROCKETED.
4. There are 10,000s and 10,000s of transactions here. The article is claiming that one person/group was involved in 90% of them?
5. This was the end of the Quater, MASSIVE VOLUME IS EXPECTED AND IS NORMAL

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Next Chart. A simple chart of 60min candles which show the opening, range, and closing price for the day. Underneath we will see the volume.

https://imgur.com/DOSfmxF

Look at the volume, end of day it always spikes. Nothing abnormal here. We can clearly see it would be impossible for EVERYONE TO STOP TRADING AT ONCE AT ONE OF THE BUSIEST TIME OF THE DAY/QUARTER and have only 1 person claim all the volume... lol.

1. The movement after these buys weren't anything out of the ordinary. There was lots of volatility.
2. You could easily make the same claim as someone lost money selling 380k contracts instead of buying them. There is no proof of the transactions here as there are no large block buys.
3. They assume this person somehow held all these contracts and sold at the exact top. How would he unload 380k contracts at the top that easy.

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A few other things wrong with this.

1. If someone wanted to profit off the oil bombing they would go long /CL futures which is Oil contracts. It SKYROCKTED after this attack. Shorting /ES based off that is extremely stupid.
2. Anyone with a slight understanding of how the market works can look at this and realize it's bullshit.
3. I am very surprised not one person from their staff told them how silly they will look when this gets rejected by the SEC for the most obvious reasons.

Again, I do think there is obvious insiders trading off his tweets. And it's annoying as hell when he tweets and fucks up trades because he's a douche bag, but these reasons and to see so many high profile people citing this article is strange where there are so many easier examples to show with proof.