An advisor to a Trump-appointed official ordered financial regulators to withdraw a report about oil trades that preceded a key Trump announcement about the U.S. war with Iran.

Bloomberg reported this week that Mel Gunewardena, an adviser to Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told a supervisor on the commission’s market oversight team to retract a referral regarding oil trades that took place minutes before President Donald Trump made a critical decision that affected international oil markets.

On March 23, 15 minutes before Trump decided not to strike Iranian power plants, a handful of traders made bets worth billions that the S&P 500 index would rise as oil prices fell, according to The New Republic's coverage of the Bloomberg report.

“The fact that this trading preceded a headline driven sell-off means that either someone got very lucky or knew something,” Tim Skirrow, head of derivatives at Energy Aspects, told Bloomberg.