Nancy Pelosi is scrambling to quash bipartisan efforts to ban stock trading by Congressional lawmakers — even as she and her husband have raked in as much as $30 million from bets on the Big Tech firms Pelosi is responsible for regulating.
Late last month, the House Speaker disclosed that the Pelosis
scooped up millions in bullish call options for stocks including Google, Salesforce, Micron Technology and Roblox. At the same, some insiders say she has
slow-walked efforts to rein in Big Tech.
Days later, Pelosi brushed off worries over
stock picking by lawmakers, claiming it was part of the “free-market economy” — comments that made Democratic insiders “blood boil,” people close to the speaker told The Post.
“Key policy makers can be rich but they shouldn’t own individual companies,” Jeff Hauser, a self-proclaimed progressive Democrat and founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Post.
Stock picking by elected officials “gets worrisome about whether legislators have access to insider information or whether your stock purchases will consciously or unconsciously impact policy making,” Hauser added.
When asked whether the opportunity to profit on trades could create a conflict of interest, the speaker has flatly said “no” and has rejected the idea of a ban on trading individual stocks. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill did not dispute The Post’s findings that Paul Pelosi has generally outperformed the market but insisted that the trades are not an issue.
“The Speaker does not own any stocks,” Hammill told The Post. “As you can see from the required disclosures, with which the Speaker fully cooperates, these transactions are marked ‘SP’ for Spouse. The Speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
Walter Shaub, the former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics during both the Obama and Trump administrations, called this defense “absolutely insulting.”
“The idea that the stocks are in her husband’s name is a complete red herring,” Shaub told The Post. “Unless members of Congress are willing to wear microphones around the clock when they’re having dinner with their spouses and going to bed, the public has no way of knowing what information they intentionally or inadvertently shared.”
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