House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was interviewed by politico on the topic of
Insider trading in Congress, which absolutely does happen.
Let's not make a mistake about it.
Anyone who tells you it's not happening is lying to you.
And we've provided examples of how it's happening.
Now before we get to those examples again, because I like to bring the receipts,
why don't we hear from Hoyer and what he has to say in response to potential
legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks,
and by the way, I actually want to give Hoyer some credit.
It appears based on his financial disclosures,
he doesn't trade individual stocks.
There was one exception and it was a stock that he invested $1000 into.
But I mean, comparatively speaking, Hoyer doesn't seem to be
as corrupt from stock trades as other members of Congress.
With that context in mind,
Hoyer was asked about a letter from Representative Jared Golden of Maine,
that called for both Pelosi and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy
to swiftly bring legislation to ban stock trading to the floor.
The bipartisan letter was signed by 27 lawmakers and included members from across
the ideological spectrum, probably because they know that it's unlikely to pass,
ranging from Democratic Representative Rashida to leave of Michigan to
Representative Matt Gates, a Republican Florida.
Now Hoyer was asked about that, here's what he had to say.
Members the ability to make investments that we encourage in every other sector,
the business community, the legal community, the medical community,
they can all invest.
And I'm not sure that it's necessary to band members of Congress from
trading because I think the current law covers what they want to preclude.
Right? So the insider trading.
So he's wrong about that and I'll get into the current law in just a moment.
But the other issue at play here is the fact that he is comparing individuals who
have chosen to serve as public servants to people who work in other professions.
So if you are a doctor, if you are a lawyer, if you are a professor,
if you're just a random private citizen who trades individual stocks, you
are not making decisions that would impact the businesses that you're invested in.
Members of Congress are, public servants are, right?
But they don't see themselves as public servants.
And that's the problem.
>> Yeah.
It's both that they've opted into it but then also that they have,
very special access information and power.
We don't allow doctors to receive, well, they receive all sorts of kickbacks from
pharma companies, but like raw checks usually is where the line can be drawn,
referees don't generally do a lot of betting on sporting events.
CEO's like people like high up board members have restrictions on what
they can do for very good reason.
And also for the exact same reason that we want members of Congress to not just
not like look overall banning of all stocks.
That's one way to go about it, but at the very least putting it behind a blind trust
or requiring that they invest in things like mutual funds.
That's not too much to ask.
You get so many perks and so many benefits and so much access.
And all of that, you'll do just fine.
All of you do, they don't need to be making decisions to
benefit themselves financially or potentially, opposing certain sorts of
legislation that they think could prove harmful to their portfolio.
>> Exactly.
So there are really two issues at play and I'm really glad that you like delved into
the conflict of interest element because to me that's the most important part.
Look, members of Congress engaging in insider trading because they're privy to
information that we don't have access to is bad.
We would go to prison for that.
And there's a double standard for people in positions of power.
We know that.
But I would say that the worst part of all of this is the fact that their decisions
on legislation is not only influenced by corporate Pac money or their donors.
It's also influenced by their personal investments, and I don't trust members
of Congress to make the right decisions when that conflict of interest is at play.
Now, he also said this is an issue that I think is dealt with in present law.
He referred to the case of former Republican representative Chris Collins of
New York, who resigned from Congress in 2018 and
was sentenced to several months in jail for insider trading,
what he's referring to here is the Stock Act, which was signed by Obama in 2012.
And the Stock Act really doesn't do enough to stop insider trading.
And what is clear is that insider trading continued after the stock act.
We've given you examples of that,
including an example of the Senate getting a classified briefing on COVID.
Before all of us knew how serious COVID was, and after that briefing, a bunch of
senators traded stocks that would be harmed by shutdowns and things like that.
>> Or bought stocks that would do well under it,
while publicly reassuring the American people that nothing fundamentally
was going to change in terms of the pandemic.
>> Yeah, that's insider trading exactly.
Now, the only thing that the stock act really tries to do but
oftentimes fails is it forces members of Congress to disclose their trade activity.
But as an Insider had reported, Conflicted, they had a conflicted Congress
investigation and they found that at least 54 current members of Congress and
almost 200 senior congressional staffers have violated the law by
failing to disclose their transactions on time and
the laws enforcement is uneven and inconsistent.
Insider also identified numerous examples of federal lawmakers trading stocks in
industries they oversee as part of their congressional committee assignments,
including within the Defense, healthcare and
energy industries posing a potential conflict of interest.
And if you're wondering well, if the stock acts has no teeth, you say, why is that?
This video explains, Let's watch.
>> The Stock act is enforced by the Department of Justice and
the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And where do they get their funding?
They get their funding from Congress,
which is the very body that they are supposed to be regulating.
So the stock act is good, but I think we need to do a whole lot better.
>> Yep, yep, they need to do a whole lot better, John.
>> Yeah, if you want more information about the conflicted Congress,
Dave Leventhal,
it was a part of it was on our show on the damage report to talk about it.
Yeah, what it effectively does is,
it is supposed to require them to disclose the trades that they've made and
dozens just don't even abide by that, that's a minimal sort of thing.
But that does not stop them from doing any of it.
It doesn't at all.
It, doesn't even like level the playing field where, in theory, okay,
they have secret information that I don't have.
But I find out about their trades six months later.
>> Right.
>> How does that level of playing field at all?
It doesn't, and look,
it's not like this is the only area of corruption that we need reform there's,
tons of, I'm not even sure that is one of the largest in comparison to campaign
finance or the opportunities that are provided to politicians after they leave
office knowing that they can go and join a corporate board to become a lobbyist.
I think that might be a strong, especially for those who don't have like Nancy,
Pelosi bucks, that might be a stronger incentive or
book deals are speaking tours or whatever.
But this is definitely an area that we need to look into.
We allow so much like they're allowed to do those trades.
Even more obvious stuff.
Joe Manchin owns a goddamn coal company.
It's the most obvious conflict of interest.
He basically single handedly eliminated certain portions of the infrastructure
bill that would have hurt him financially and we allow it.
I'm not a legal expert, I'm not a lot of things, he should be in jail for that.
At the very least you should not be able to own companies like that are gonna
interface with virtually every big piece of legislation that the government is
likely to pass.
How can we allow that?
Well, we allow it because they're benefiting from it and
they're the only ones that could conceivably write laws to reform it.
And obviously they're not gonna do that.
They're either already rich and they're not gonna hurt themselves or
they look to the senior members of their party and
they know if I play ball in 10 or 20 years, I could be where they are.
And so virtually none of them are willing to do it.
Some will sign onto a letter or something.
And I'm sure people like Rashida Talib are probably honest about it.
Matt Gates,
maybe it's just opportunism are wanting to see anti corruption in a very cheap way.
But we just we need to elect far more that are there to accomplish their task in
government, not to set themselves up in the shorter,
long term to financially benefit themselves.