The bombshell dropped on Thursday, just a day after it was reported that Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had dumped up to $5 million in tech stock right before the Senate passed the CHIPS Act, which is projected to pump about $80 billion into that industry.
It seems as though the music is about to stop, and someone is getting worried. These are stocks Paul Pelosi only bought weeks ago.
The Pelosi gravy train appears to be about to derail, and who is it bringing the flow of suspiciously timed stock trading money to a screeching halt? The Republicans, right? Wrong.
The embattled speaker of the House is about to get torched by her own, and with the takeover of the Democratic Party by the radical left in all but name, she dare not say a word or make a move against it.
Democrats in the House are on the cusp of proposing legislation that would ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks, according to Punchbowl News.
Pelosi has opposed previous efforts to curtail congressional trading, the octogenarian multi-millionaire heiress of the D’Alesandro political dynasty having amassed a fortune while in office… on a $220,000 a year salary (and that’s only during the years when she’s been the speaker).
“We are a free market economy. [Members of Congress] should be able to participate in that,” Pelosi said during a December news conference.
But the next month, Pelosi changed her tune and said she would support efforts to ban lawmakers from trading stocks.
A financial disclosure filed by Pelosi on Tuesday revealed that her husband had sold his shares of tech company Nvidia at a loss of $341,365 — “an unusual thing for the lawmaker to note on a disclosure statement,” Truthout reported.
Should members of Congress be able to trade stocks?
That’s a massive loss to take — unless someone is trying very hard to look like they’re taking losses from what many would consider a no-brainer. If the Pelosis had held this investment it would have likely performed extremely well for them.
Pelosi has vociferously denied that she or her husband have participated in insider trading by virtue of her considerable insider knowledge and decision-making power when it comes to federal interventions in the economy. However, multiple instances of suspiciously fortuitous and well-timed trading decisions on the part of Mr. Pelosi have led to increasing scrutiny over the last few years.
It appears that far-left Democrats have put their foot down on this, and with unexpected support from their Republican opponents, there is a good chance the effort to ban congressional trading could succeed.
There is no reason members of Congress should hold and trade individual stock when we write major policy and have access to sensitive information.
There are many ways members can invest w/o creating actual or appeared conflict of interest,like thrift savings plans or index funds https://t.co/VK4Pgx8AgI
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 18, 2021
Multiple polls have led to the same conclusion: This one cuts across party lines, with the American people overwhelmingly supporting a ban.
A January poll revealed that 67 percent of voters supported one. And when exposed to arguments both for it and against, that number actually increased to 74 percent.
NEW POLL: A bipartisan majority of voters support banning members of Congress from trading stocks.
Support increases to 74% when presenting arguments for and against the ban. https://t.co/33RINlcMPI pic.twitter.com/9t8vTDViB6
— Data for Progress (@DataProgress) January 18, 2022
A Morning Consult/Politico poll from around the same time found that 63 percent of voters favored a ban. And crucially, in the curious case of Paul Pelosi, “support for a ban on stock trading among lawmakers’ families also enjoys majority support, with 57 percent of all voters backing such a measure.”
