President Donald Trump took an important step towards draining the Swamp earlier this month when he threw his support behind a landmark anti-corruption bill.
The legislation would ban U.S. senators and representatives from trading stocks. This is an essential measure to ensure that powerful interests can’t sway them. How can a congressman vote his conscience on, say, an economics bill when he’s got one eye on his stock portfolio?
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) first hatched the idea, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has since taken it up. President Trump endorsed it, calling the idea a “MASSIVE WIN!”
Behind the scenes, other members of Congress are panicking, and with good reason. Hawley’s bill is not-so-subtly called the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act — the PELOSI Act — a jab at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Last year, Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul raked in between $7.8 million and $42.5 million. Most of it was thanks to their investments. The Pelosis, who are worth as much as $413 million, saw their stock portfolio outperform every hedge fund in America last year.
The Pelosis are either the luckiest investors on earth or Nancy is using her knowledge of government policy to anticipate the markets. There’s a term for that: insider trading.
For example, about a year ago, Paul Pelosi suddenly dumped 2,000 shares of Visa stock, which made him at least half a million dollars. Just weeks later, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice sued Visa for supposedly wielding a monopoly over the nation’s debit markets.
The lawsuit was flimsy, at best. But Nancy Pelosi would’ve known it was coming. As a Breitbart News report put it:
“Immediately before the inauguration, the DOJ asked the extremely partisan Southern District of New York — which is where Team Biden filed the case — to show no mercy to the company. The administration tried to pin some of the blame for its inflation on the company’s merchant debit card fees, which, according to Northwestern University Assistant Professor of Finance Lulu Wang, amount to just 44 cents for the average $60 Visa debit card transaction. Critics say the DOJ’s case was less about facts than about finding a scapegoat for inflation.”
That blow to Visa proved very lucrative for the Pelosis.
Another telling case involved former Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.).
In 2020, just one day before his House committee released a report with damaging findings on Boeing’s safety procedures, Lowenthal’s wife suddenly dumped the family’s Boeing shares. The timing was uncanny. The stock plummeted shortly after the report became public, sparing the congressman’s household significant losses.
Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nevada), my opponent for a Las Vegas-area House seat in 2024, bought shares of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall. Shortly afterwards, the Biden administration began lobbying NATO and the EU to increase defense spending in support of Ukraine, and the price of the stock more than doubled. It’s as though Lee, who just happens to sit on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, knew something the rest of us didn’t.
It’s long past time for Washington to stop this madness.
Technically, the stock investments of members of Congress are already regulated under the STOCK Act. This law, passed in 2012, prohibits legislators from trading stocks based on information they obtain in the course of their government duties.
The problem is that insider trading is very difficult to prove. Investigators would need something like an email where a lawmaker explicitly stated he was making an investment based on inside information. Even members of Congress are rarely that stupid.
In 2022, The New York Times reported that nearly a fifth of Congress members traded stock directly related to their committee work. Among the most egregious was Lowenthal. His wife dumped Boeing shares a day before his House committee released damaging findings on the company’s safety procedures.
One year later, Business Insider flat-out accused 78 members of Congress of violating the STOCK Act. The infractions they reported ranged from late transparency filings to failing to disclose investments altogether.
Given the sensitivity of government work, the power of special interests on Capitol Hill, and the transparent abuse of the STOCK Act, the only way forward is to enact a ban on stock trading.
To restore public trust in Congress, it is necessary to end the financial conflicts of interest that plague Washington.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth. Join PJ Media VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
