Trump bought Axon stock before ICE sought $220 million Taser deal

President Donald Trump bought as much as $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise — maker of Tasers, body cameras and policing software — two weeks before Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought a five-year, $220 million contract that experts told CNBC appeared tailored to the company’s weapons.

On Feb. 10, Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of Axon stock, according to federal disclosures he filed in May. On Feb. 24, ICE posted a notice seeking roughly 17,800 new Tasers, along with unlimited cartridges and training.

The White House has said Trump’s assets are held in a trust managed by his children and that Trump’s investments are managed by independent third-party firms, not Trump or his family.

“There are no conflicts of interest,” spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNBC, calling the scrutiny a “tired narrative” pushed by Democrats.

Trump’s disclosures with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, made public May 14, show more than 3,700 transactions, with the total amount for each listed as a range rather than an exact figure.

Under federal law, presidents are exempt from the criminal conflict-of-interest statute that applies to most executive branch officials.

The ICE notice does not name Axon, which makes about 90% of U.S. Tasers according to investment firm Brown Advisory, but it calls for “conductive-energy weapons” with specifications and capabilities that procurement reviewers and three policing experts told CNBC appeared to match only Axon products. The company already supplies the federal government with Tasers.

If finalized, the purchase would more than quadruple ICE’s current Taser arsenal, replacing about 4,300 devices in the field, according to the February notice.

The notice refers to an upgrade to the “T10,” Axon’s “TASER 10” model, to replace ICE’s older “X26P/X2 Tasers,” which are also Axon-made. It also specifies features associated with “TASER 10,” including a 45-foot range and 10 individually targeted probes — all specifications and capabilities that procurement experts say effectively foreclose other bidders.

There’s no evidence Trump was involved in or had knowledge of the procurement process, that contracting officials knew of his stock purchase or that Axon knew that Trump was a shareholder. Trump bought the stock on Feb. 10, but the purchase did not become public until his financial disclosure was released in May. There is no indication Axon had access to non-public information about the president’s personal investments.

The ICE notice was part of the standard federal procurement process. Federal procurement records show no contract has been awarded yet, and because the notice was a “Request For Information” rather than a formal solicitation, there is no public record showing which vendors, if any, responded.

Axon did not respond to requests for comment on whether it discussed the potential Taser purchase with ICE, DHS or White House officials before ICE posted the Feb. 24 notice.

The timing of the notice raises questions for ethics and three policing experts in part because of its proximity to Trump’s stock purchase.

The president was also carrying out his pledge to enact mass deportations. Trump’s Feb. 10 purchase occurred weeks after federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed two U.S. citizens who were protesting an immigration crackdown in the city. Civil rights advocates have decried the killings of protesters as an overreach of law enforcement.

“What happened (in Minneapolis) showed how ICE agents have a hard job,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former acting chief of staff at ICE during the Biden administration. “The agency has a responsibility to make sure they have appropriate modern tools and training, but it’s vital that new purchases are made for the right reasons.”

Fleischaker, now a senior advisor for immigration policy and strategy at UnidosUS, said the timing “raises red flags,” while cautioning it is impossible to assess from the public record whether anything improper occurred. UnidosUS is a nonprofit, nonpartisan Hispanic civil rights advocacy group.

“It is not smart to buy stock in a company that was impacted by the decisions you would be making at the agency,” Fleischaker said. “I would have stayed far, far away from actual impropriety, or the appearance of impropriety.”

Ethics experts said the concern is not proof of wrongdoing, but the appearance of a conflict.

“The concern is that (Trump) bought into a company whose business could grow if his own administration expands immigration enforcement,” Jordan Libowitz, vice president of communications at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNBC. CREW is a liberal-leaning, nonpartisan watchdog group on government ethics.

Axon shares rose more than 22% in the month after Trump’s purchase, before paring those gains. As of the June 26 close, the stock was up about 7% from his purchase date. If Trump bought near the top amount of the disclosed range, the potential paper gain could be worth roughly $350,000 as of market close on June 26. In the week following ICE’s notice for seeking a contract, the company’s stock rose more than 34%.

ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to requests for comment. CNBC asked the agencies whether the purchase has been awarded, why ICE is seeking such a large expansion, how many vendors expressed interest, whether any company besides Axon could meet the requirements and whether the deal requires DHS secretary-level approval.

A person familiar with the procurement, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation for discussing the pending ICE notice, said awarding the Taser contract appears to be stalled by its price tag and a shakeup in DHS leadership.

The person said ICE posted the contract notice about a week before then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired and before she had signed off on it. Under Noem, DHS rules required expenditures over $100,000 to be personally approved by the secretary’s office. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin canceled the rule in April.

It’s unclear what the timeline for awarding the contract is, but the person familiar with the procurement said DHS is expected to continue pursuing a deal.

For Axon, the financial upside may not stop at Tasers.

The roughly $35 billion company’s biggest growth engine is the policing infrastructure that can follow weapons purchases: cloud storage, evidence-management systems, body cameras, real-time operations tools and AI products. Policing experts say one-time device orders can turn into a long-term technology relationship.

“If Trump expands ICE, Axon could be selling the infrastructure behind the crackdown,” said Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation focused on policing surveillance who has written extensively about Axon. “It can sell the cameras, cloud storage, software and AI tools that come with a bigger federal enforcement machine.” The nonprofit group advocates for privacy and free speech online.

Axon already has a $370 million DHS body-camera and software contract awarded in 2023, though only about $67.5 million has been obligated so far, according to HigherGov, a government market-intelligence platform that tracks federal contracts and grants.

The potential ICE Taser deal would land as Axon is already riding record demand. The company reported its two highest-revenue quarters on record: $796.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 39% from a year earlier, and $807.3 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 34%, fueled by Taser sales and fast-growing AI products.

Axon executives told investors in February that DHS contracts are a “major opportunity.”

Axon has been staffing up to chase that opening. On a May 6 earnings call, Axon President Joshua Isner said the company had “rebuilt a large portion” of its federal team and hired Claudia Davidson from Palantir, where she spent more than seven years helping expand the data-mining and defense contractor’s business with federal agencies.

“We’re seeing renewed interest in body cameras and Tasers in federal law enforcement,” Isner told investors, adding that Axon’s federal business was “trending very much in the right direction” and that, “with a few things going our way, it could be a banner year in Fed.”

However, civil liberties advocates warn that ICE is wading deeper into Axon’s surveillance ecosystem.

Axon’s software works to combine live feeds from body cameras, drones, fixed cameras and other sources. If ICE expands raids and works more closely with state and local police, advocates warn that this kind of system could give federal agents a real-time map of local operations.

“If they are able to plug into Ring cameras, livestreams, body cameras and other local feeds, then suddenly you are not just talking about officer safety or accountability,” Guariglia said. “You are talking about a platform that could give federal law enforcement a real-time picture of where people are, what is happening on the ground and how to respond with local precision.”

Axon announced a Ring partnership in 2025 that lets Ring users voluntarily share footage with law enforcement through Axon’s evidence platform. Axon’s Fusus platform separately aggregates shared community cameras, body cameras, drones and other feeds onto a real-time map.

Fleischaker said the proposed Taser use expansion via the DHS contract appears consistent with the Trump administration’s broader immigration agenda.

“It indicates what we know from other places, which is that the Trump administration has and will continue to ramp up immigration enforcement beyond levels we’ve ever seen,” Fleischaker said. “That requires lots and lots of enforcement, and they would be procuring Tasers to be a part of that effort.”

Axon’s growth strategy has also led the company to boost its spending in Washington.

Axon spent nearly $2.5 million lobbying last year, its highest annual total, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit organization that tracks political spending. Its targets included legislation and regulation around body cameras, counter-drone technology, digital evidence management and other law-enforcement products it is pushing into federal agencies.

And that push appears to be gaining ground. Congress has proposed a $20 million line item in DHS appropriations requiring the agency to outfit immigration enforcement agents with body cameras, partly as a result of heavy lobbying by Axon, policing experts say.

Democrats have joined the effort, too. Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, both Arizona Democrats, introduced legislation requiring all DHS officers to wear body cameras. The legislation has no Republican support, making it unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Donors connected to Scottsdale, Arizona-based Axon donated over $20,000 to Gallego during the 2024 election cycle when he ran for the Senate, according to OpenSecrets.

Gallego and Kelly, who have publicly championed body-camera and use-of-force requirements for ICE, did not respond to requests for comment on Axon’s position as a likely beneficiary of body-camera mandates.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats have called for body cameras as an accountability measure and as a political bargaining chip with Republicans. For Axon, they are also a gateway product, policing experts say, to tie federal officers to its cloud storage, evidence software and AI tools.

“Body cameras can create a durable technology relationship with law enforcement agencies because the footage has to be stored, managed, analyzed and integrated into broader evidence systems,” Guariglia said.

Axon’s political spending has also drawn scrutiny from shareholders.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation sued Axon in January to stop the company from excluding a shareholder proposal seeking more disclosure around its political spending.

“Since Trump came into office, Axon has spent enormous amounts of money in politics to curry favor and support contracts and laws that benefit the company,” Richard Kirby, a former SEC attorney who represented the foundation in its lawsuit against Axon that settled March 9, told CNBC. “That is exactly why investors need transparency.”