Pelosi Recent Financial Disclosures Have Many People LIVID OVER HER BRIBES PAID IN TECH STOCK PERKS, FAVORS, DISCOUNTS AND INSIDER TRADING WARRANTS
Troy
Mullens
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may is completely two-faced. She may condemn large companies like Amazon and Facebook when in public, but what she recently did with her husband regarding the two companies is raising a lot of eyebrows.
Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi, who is a venture capitalist purchased, $4.8 million of Amazon shares. But what’s even crazier is that when he made the purchase he exercised his options he held in Amazon and bought each share for under $300 than what the stock was trading for that day.
That’s not all though. Pelosi also purchased 5,000 shares of Facebook for $720,000 and he already held $500,000 to $1 million previously. 3,000 of those stocks were also purchased at a discounted rate below what the stock was trading at.
The Amazon options had a strike price of $1,600, nearly $300 below the price Amazon shares were trading for that day. He bought 3,000 shares — he had previously held only options at the end of 2018, according to a filing.
He bought 5,000 shares of Facebook, 3,000 of which had a strike price of $140 and the rest had a strike price of $150. Facebook traded around 37% above the lower strike price the day he exercised the calls. Prior to the purchase, Paul Pelosi already held between $500,000 and $1 million in Facebook stock, a filing shows.
On the same day Paul Pelosi made the purchases, Senator Pelosi criticized Facebook for “schmoozing” with the Trump administration. “I think that they have been very abusive of the great opportunity that technology has given them,” she said in a press conference, adding, “My thought about them is that all they want is their tax cuts and no antitrust action against them.”
“They intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people with money from god knows where,” she said.
They literally just want full control and all the money they can get. This demonstrates the hypocrisy of Democrats.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, owns between $1 million and $5 million worth of non-public stock in his family coal business, Enersystems, making him the only Democratic senator who is directly profiting from the environmentally devastating coal business. Despite pressure from the left, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made Manchin ranking member of the committee, and Manchin did not divest his coal holdings.
Some senators want to do away with these perceived conflicts of interest. Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced anti-corruption legislation in August 2018 that included a ban on members of Congress, senior congressional staff, Cabinet secretaries, White House staff, federal judges, and other officials from owning individual stocks, bonds, commodities, futures, and other types of securities while in office. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced the Ban Conflicted Trading Act in December to prevent members of Congress and senior staff from trading individual corporate stocks.
This report is based on Sludge’s living database of federal lawmakers’ current financial investments, the only known, up-to-date database of its kind. Annual and periodic financial disclosures, though public, are difficult to access and presented in different formats, including low-resolution scans of handwritten documents, and are riddled with inconsistencies. Sludge’s database has spawned countless conflict-of-interest stories.
Financial Firms Lead the Way
Senators own between $28.1 and $95.6 million worth of stock in the five sectors examined by Sludge/The Guardian. They have the most money invested in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector due in part to Sen. John Hoeven’s (R-N.D.) investment in Westbrand, Inc., a private holding company that owns multiple banks, worth between roughly $5 million and $25 million. Hoeven has other large stock investments in the sector including securities and investment firms BlackRock (between $250,001 and $500,000) and Blackstone ($100,001 to $250,000), and insurance companies such as MetLife ($100,002 to $200,000) and Prudential Financial ($100,001 to $250,000).
Altogether, 37 senators and their spouses own between $12.8 million and $48.2 million worth of stock in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector. They have the most money invested in the commercial banking industry, between $8.3 million and $32.9 million.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, owns between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in private real estate insurance firm Tuscaloosa Title Company. Shelby sits on the Housing, Transportation, and Community Development Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Housing and Urban Development, affordable housing, foreclosure mitigation, and other housing matters, and the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee, which oversees the insurance industry.
Nine other Banking Committee members are personally invested in the financial companies they oversee, including:
- Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), a member of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Subcommittee—which oversees banks—who owns stock in Regions Financial Corporation ($50,001 to $100,000) and MetLife ($15,001 to $50,000);
- Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Subcommittee and the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee, who owns stock in JPMorgan Chase ($15,001 to $50,000) and insurance firm Prudential Financial ($1,001 to $15,000);
- Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who owns stock in MetLife ($1,001 to $15,000);
- Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), a member of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, who owns stock worth between $2,002 to $30,000 each in Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo, as well as insurance giant Allstate;
- Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a member of the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee, who owns between $361,000 and close to $1.1 million worth of stock in the finance, insurance and real estate sector, including commercial banks Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Regions Financial Corporation, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo, credit companies Mastercard and Visa, and insurance firms AFLAC and Prudential Financial;
- Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who purchased between $250,001 and $500,000 worth of private stock in hotel investment fund Bird Dog Hospitality Fund 2, which is run by private equity firm Bird Dog Equity Partners, in late March;
- Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who owns stock in Allstate ($15,001 to $50,000);
- Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), a member of the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee, who owns stock in insurance firms Fidelity National Financial ($1,001 to $15,000) and Marsh & McLennan Companies ($50,001 to $100,000); investment banking company Piper Jaffray Companies ($2,002 to $31,000), commercial banks TCF Financial Corporation ($100,001 to $250,000) and U.S. Bancorp ($165,003 to $400,000); and financial firm Fidelity National Information Services ($50,001 to $100,000); and
- Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), chair of the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee, who owns a total of between $30,002 and $100,000 worth of stock in real estate investment trusts Phillips Edison Grocery Center REIT I and Apartment Investment and Management Company and sold his investment in Revere Bank last month;
The same phenomenon of senators owning stock in industries they oversee exists in many other Senate committees. Senators have between $8.3 million and $22 million invested in the communications and electronics sector, including up to $4.2 million in internet companies and as much as $4.1 million in computer software businesses. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.), a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet and the Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade and Consumer Protection, owns between $53,000 and $194,000 worth of Microsoft stock, as much as $99,000 of Intel stock, and up to $30,000 each in AT&T and Verizon stock.
Sen. Jackie Rosen, who is also on both subcommittees, owns between $310,000 and $1 million worth of communications and electronics stock. Her largest potential investments are as much as $265,000 in Amazon, up to $115,000 in AT&T, and $100,000 in software company Adobe.
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