Nancy Pelosi defends lawmakers owning individual stocks
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended rules that allow members of Congress to own individual stocks, batting do🔥wn concerns about lawmakers using insider information to juice their portfolios.
The liberal congresswoman from San Francisco said lawmakers should be able to own stocks because the US is a “free-market economy.”
Her comments Wednesday came amid rampant apparent violations of the STOCK Act, which is supposed to reign in lawmakers’ trades.
When asked whether the opportunity to profit on trades could create a conflict of interest, the speaker flatly said “no” to the idea of supporting a ban on trading individual stocks.
“We’re a free-market economy,” Pelosi told reporters. “They [members of Congress] should be able to particꦉipate in that.”
The speaker conceded that lawmakers needed to folᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚlow rules on public disclosure of the trades.
“If people aren’t reporting [stock trades], they should be,” she said.
Still, Pelosi’s reaction was seen as flippant by some given the rash of apparent stock trade violations.
Pelosi’s most recent financial disclosure shows her husband has millions of dollars worth of holdings. That includes stock in Amazon and Apple that are each worth between $5 million and $25 million. Other assets she reported include stock options held in Google’s parent company worth between $1 million and $5 million, Comcast stock worth between $1 mill𒆙ion and $5 million and stock in Visa worth between $5 million and $25 million.
Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, is a businessman who runs a venture capital and investment firm Financial Leasing Services Inc. Over the years he’s made countless bets on high-profile companies his wife is supposed to regulate, like Amazon, Apple and Google.
Pelosi has long said she has no involvement in or prior knowledge of her husband’s trading🍌 decisions and does♊ not own any stock herself.
Pelosi’s position contradicts sharply with the position of most liberals, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
In the past month both lawmakers have slammed the idea of members of Congress trading stocks as “brazen” and “ludicrous.”
The issue of congressional s🦂tock trading has taken on new urgency since the beginning of the pandemic, when suspiciously timed stock trades by lawmakers in both parties provoked outrage and led to multiple investigations.
To date, no one has been charged in conne𒈔ction with stock trading investigations undertaken by the Just💖ice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission.
But the often lucrative trades nonetheless shine a spotlight ꧂on the inadequacies of a 2012 law called the Stock Act, which bars memb💦ers from using inside information to make investment decisions and requires that all stock trades be reported to Congress within 45 days.
The 201💎2 law was passed with bipartisan support in the wake of a stock trading scand🐻al. Yet in the nearly 10 years since it was enacted, no one has been prosecuted under it even as many members continue to conspicuously trade.
In some recent cases𒁏, lawmakers have failed to report their trades altogether, as requir꧟ed by the law.
With Post wires
