House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has faced years of scrutiny for her husband’s history of perfectly timed stock trades from conservative media outlets… but the scandal has been largely ignored in the mainstream media.
But The New York Times finally took a look at stock trades by members of Congress… and the paper found a big scandal roiling House Democrats.
Of course, the piece by The New York Times opened by mentioning two Republicans: Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
However, the Times piece made the Democrats look significantly worse. The paper called one Democrat’s trade “especially striking.” Rep. Alan Lowenthal of California said on a disclosure form that his wife had sold her Boeing Aviation shares on March 5, 2020. One day later, the House Transportation Committee released a damning report on Boeing’s role in two fatal crashes… and Lowenthal sits on the House Transportation Committee.
It doesn’t get better from there.
The Times identified more than 3,700 stock trades among lawmakers as “potential conflicts,” and the paper implicated some big names, like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
But out of all these Congressmembers, California Rep. Ro Khanna looks the worst.
Khanna, a Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has claimed to have a commitment to ethical fundraising. He’s pledged to take money only from individuals, not PACs or businesses, and he’s given interviews about his support for a complete ban on stock trading by members.
However, Khanna disclosed that his family had traded stock in eight companies that have been under investigation by one of the congressman’s committees, according to the Times. Worst of all, his family reportedly traded stock in the pharmaceutical company AbbVie during the height of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the company’s pricing practices.
Khanna himself has denied any involvement in his family’s trades and he has dismissed allegations of hypocrisy. An alumnus of Obama’s Cabinet, he’s considered a rising star, and he’s been mentioned as a possible candidate for president.
For Congress members’ families, Khanna claims he supports allowing them to trade through a “highly diversified trust.”
“If someone’s coming into a marriage with independent resources, I think that’s the appropriate way to deal with the conflict,” Khanna told the Times.
Out of Khanna’s reported 897 stock trades, a whopping 149 were potential conflicts.
Many lawmakers argue that they’re allowing their stockbrokers to trade on their accounts without any input, or that it’s their family making all the right moves. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, claims she isn’t involved in her husband’s lucrative stock trades.
Critics argue that 3,700 problematic stock trades by lawmakers and their families is likely a very low estimate. Some lawmakers may influence tax policy even outside their committees. And others, like Pelosi, do not appear in the Times analysis due to her lack of direct involvement in committees.
The Times explains:
To examine the potential for conflicts, The Times used a comprehensive database called Capitol Trades, which was compiled from congressional trading disclosures by the German financial data firm 2iQ Research. The Times then matched the trades against committee assignments, hearings and investigations to construct a picture of how members’ congressional work and their personal finances could potentially intersect…
The analysis shows that 13 lawmakers… reported that they or their immediate family members had bought or sold shared of companies that were under investigation by their committees between 2019 and 2021, encompassing years in which Democrats controlled the House.
More than 60 percent of Americans support banning Congress members from tradings stock, according to a poll by Morning Consult in January.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is co-sponsoring a bill requiring lawmakers to put their assets in a blind trust, similar to the ones often used for U.S. presidents.
“The American people don’t want us day trading for profit, and engaging in active trading of the very equities that are connected to the policies that we are deciding on and voting on every day,” Roy told the Times.
Democrat leadership is drafting a similar but distinct bill, according to a memo from aides obtained by the Times.
The Horn editorial team