You may have seen the recent news that the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi invested between $1 million and $5 million in chip manufacturers just as Nancy was about to call a vote on a relief bill providing $52 billion to chip manufacturers.
To most people, this is insider trading. The “insider” in this case is wife Nancy Pelosi who, in preparation for this bill, would have access to extraordinary information about the semiconductor industry, the plans, intentions, effects and projections of that industry as a whole and semiconductor companies individually.
I wonder if husband Paul would have access to this information? Maybe it was lying around the house, maybe he has a logon to her computer system, perhaps they just talked about it, a harmless conversation. It seems pretty suspicious that an investment this size with this kind of timing would occur in a vacuum. Putting two and two together, we have a possible, severe misdemeanor, that in other cases has caused the guilty investor to go to jail and pay multi-million dollar fines.
Do I have access to the plans, intentions, affects and projections of semiconductors? Does the general public? No. Maybe I could be as rich as the Pelosis if I did.
Pelosi’s office responded to the charge. “The Speaker does not own any stocks. As you can see from the required disclosures, with which the Speaker fully cooperates, these transactions are marked ‘SP’ for Spouse. The Speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
What? Nancy doesn’t own any stocks? Did she forget she was married? She had no prior knowledge of multimillion-dollar family transactions?
Well, the Pelosis appear to be worth about $115 million. That’s pretty wealthy. Maybe $5 million is insignificant. Maybe they just don’t talk about it.
Or maybe…
This isn’t the first time Paul has been accused of insider trading.
Last January the New York Post reported “Nancy Pelosi makes millions off tech stocks – and scoffs at push to ban congressional trades.” They claim she made $30 million in illegal trading.
Just before Nancy presided over an anti-trust bill that involved big tech, Forbes reported (July 2021):
“On Wednesday evening, Bloomberg News published a report titled “Pelosi’s Husband Locked In $5.3 Million From Alphabet Options,” which carried the subheadlines, “Action was week before House panel considered antitrust bills,” and “Antitrust bills target Alphabet’s Google, Apple, Amazon.””
This was all disclosed in the proper forms.
What this means is that either Paul is a freakin’ genius with a gift for coincidence, or Nancy Pelosi thinks the American public is too stupid to connect the dots.
She may be right. Will Republicans call for an investigation? I doubt it – this could well be a perk of the job, no telling who else is doing it. I love my conservative brethren but there are bad apples everywhere and Washington is full of temptations. An investigation would set precedents that nobody wants.
As we have written before. To date, at least 52 lawmakers are guilty of violating the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which allows lawmakers to trade based on insider knowledge as long as they reveal those trades within 45 days. The penalty for violating this rule is a laughable $200 fine that can be waived by a congressional committee.
As Speaker of the House, she is pretty much untouchable. An investigation would be fruitless and would be a loser politically even if they could pin something on her.
She’s 82, and ready to retire. Once she retires no one will bother to go after her. And her five children and her grandchildren will have generational wealth. Corruption pays. High level corruption pays very well.
How great is this country?
Nancy Pelosi’s husband buys millions worth of Nvidia stock ahead of chip-manufacturing bill vote