More than a dozen members of Congress have violated law on stock trades, investigation finds
A massive investigation of the financial disclosure history of every member of Congress found more than a dozen currently-serving members who have violated the STOCK Act, a piece of legislation that sets rules for lawmakers’ stock portfolios.
Business Insider published the investigation on Monday, a collaborative effort from several dozen journalists, fact-checkers and others at the news outfit. The expansive project provides a look at just how frequently financial disclosure rules are violated by both members and people on their staffs.
In total, six Democrats and eight Republicans received the lowest grade offered by journalists at Insider for their disclosure history; each, along with a handful of other members with slightly higher grades, had violated the STOCK Act by filing numerous late disclosures of stock trades.
A few were responsible for hundreds of individual violations, including a staggering total of more than 720 violations committed by Rep Diana Harshbarger, a Tennessee Republican. Ms Harshbarger didn’t respond to Insider’s request for comment.
In the Senate, two members were graded the lowest rating on the scale: Sen Dianne Feinstein, longtime Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as Sen Tommy Tuberville, a Republican newcomer and ally of former President Donald Trump who has reportedly violated the STOCK Act more than 130 times since taking office in January. Mr Tuberville did not comment; Ms Feinstein’s office defended the senator’s financial practices when approached.
"Senator Feinstein has complied with the laws, been completely transparent in her filings and has followed best practices by putting her personal assets in a qualified blind trust,” said a spokesperson. Along with one violation of her own totalling $15,001 in late-reported trades, three members of Ms Feinstein’s senior staff have reportedly violated the law.
Insider’s investigation is likely to only fuel calls from members on both sides of the aisle such as Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are opposed to members trading stocks for the practice to be banned outright. A Democrat-led bill joined by two Republicans that would do so was introduced in the House earlier this year, but has seen no progress since it was introduced in March.
Rep Ocasio-Cortez hammered the issue recently on Twitter, writing that it was “absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office”.
“The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have,” tweeted the New York congresswoman.
Sen Richard Burr, who was one of just a few senators to oppose the STOCK Act’s prohibition on members trading stocks with nonpublic information, came under investigation last year after he sold $1.6m worth of stock after being briefed on the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020; the trades involved industries that took major financial hits as a result of the pandemic. The Justice Department announced in January that it would not file charges against him.
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