President Donald Trump threw shade at his rival Rep. Nancy Pelosi when asked if members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks.
Speaking to Time Magazine, the president said that he would sign a ban on congressional stock trading and specifically called out one of those on Capitol Hill who does so the most.
‘Well, I watched Nancy Pelosi get rich through insider information, and I would be okay with it,’ the president stated.
He said he would ‘absolutely’ sign a congressional stock trading ban should the members of Congress decide to restrict themselves from profiting from the practice.
‘If they send that to me, I would do it,’ the president affirmed.
The former House speaker maintains that she does not trade stocks but rather her husband, Paul Pelosi, a venture capitalist, is the one buying and selling.
Still, the couple’s net worth has doubled from $121 million in 2015 to $253 million now, estimates from congressional money tracker Quiver Quantitative show.
Regardless of who is behind the trades, the lawmaker’s federally-mandated stock disclosures show that the couple makes massive, risky trades on tech companies, many from the San Francisco Bay Area where Pelosi represents, just before the shares skyrocket in price.
The trades, which almost always result in huge profits, have drawn questions from market spectators and ethics watchdogs, including whether or not Pelosi uses the information she learns as a lawmaker to help her husband capture gains – though she fervently denies this.
For example, in January Pelosi disclosed a trade of between $50,000 to $100,000 worth of risky options contracts betting that a new tech company, Tempus AI, would go up.
So far, that stock is up an eye-watering 75 percent this year, skyrocketing in share price in a few months.
A year before at the end of 2023, Pelosi disclosed another high-risk options trade of tech behemoth Nvidia.
That specific trade was worth between $1 million and $5 million and since then the share price has risen close to 120 percent.
The SPY, a popular market index, by comparison, has only risen 20 percent since that same time in 2023, showing how lucrative some of the Pelosi’s investments have been.
Further raising concern about the impropriety of stock trading in Congress was Pelosi’s hesitance to ban the practice when she was the most powerful member on Capitol Hill.
While speaker Pelosi neglected to put measures that would ban congressional stock trading up for a vote, arguing that ‘we’re a free market economy,’ and lawmakers ‘should be able to participate in that.’
Though Pelosi is far from the only member of Congress that has drawn scrutiny because of her massive gains.
On the other side of the aisle former Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., also got into hot water when he dumped over $1.7 million in stock just ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic as he was privy to confidential information.
After an investigation into the suspicious trade, the Justice Department opted against prosecuting Burr, he told reporters at the time.
Current regulations under the STOCK Act simply require members to disclose their trades within 45 days of making them, though the cash penalty for late reporting is just pennies on the dollar as the measure doesn’t require a fixed price fine.
The law also prohibits members from using information gleaned from their work to their advantage in the markets, though this is nearly impossible to enforce.
Recognizing this as an unfair advantage, a number of younger lawmakers have introduced measures to ban stock trading among members of Congress in the last few years.
In fact, a bill that would ban stock trading among members made it out of committee for the first time ever last year.
Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., introduced a bill in the House in January to ban members from trading stocks.
The measure already has 65 cosponsors, including over a dozen Republicans.
Though the bill still has yet to see any movement since its introduction months ago.