When Adriana Kugler bailed on the Fed in August, gifting Donald Trump an open seat on the central bank’s board, most observers assumed there was some connection between her sudden exit and the unfolding political drama which threatened an early end to Jerome Powell’s chairmanship.

Such suspicions were heightened by the simultaneous ouster, by Trump, of BLS chief Erika McEntarfer. (Kugler’s CV includes a stint as chief economist for the Department of Labor under Barack Obama.)

For his part, Trump suggested Kugler might’ve had a disagreement with Powell. As it turns out, he was right, but the spat wasn’t over monetary policy, it was over Powell’s refusal to let Kugler trade during the pre-meeting blackout period in order to rectify positions at odds with Fed rules.

Although details about those positions were sparse on Saturday, documents posted by the Office of Government Ethics (included in full below) show Kugler’s husband traded a lot in 2024, including during weeks around FOMC decisions. That’s a no-no.

Kugler says those trades were conducted without her knowledge and that her husband, a lawyer, didn’t mean to violate any rules. She said the same thing in connection with a series of improper trades last year, when the couple divested shares of Apple and Cava Group in order to comply with Fed ethics regulations.

Fed officials have to file periodic and annual disclosure statements, and they’re also compelled to submit a form after they leave. Around a year ago, Kugler met with officials in the Fed’s compliance office, according to sources who spoke to the mainstream media over the weekend.

A comment in the new OGE disclosures — which appear to cover all trades made by Kugler’s husband in 2024 and 2025 — notes that the transactions “were referred earlier this year” by the Fed board’s ethics department to the independent inspector general for the central bank.

The deadline for 2024 disclosures was May. Everyone met it but Kugler, who asked for more time. Then, in late July, just before that month’s FOMC meeting, she asked Powell for a waiver to trade during the blackout period to divest “impermissible” holdings, according to The New York Times‘s Colby Smith. Powell said no, and that was apparently that.

It’s probably not a stretch to suggest Trump was aware that Kugler’s position was tenuous or at least could be if someone made a big enough deal of the trades.

This brings the number of former (and current, for that matter) Fed officials whose trading activities were flagged as possible ethics violations to, by my count, five since the pandemic.