House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul conveniently purchased between $1 and $5 million in semiconductor stock options days before Senate lawmakers voted on a bill designed to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
The bill, which cleared the House in February, seeks to increase competitiveness with China in the semiconductor industry though $52 billion in chip subsidies, $45 billion to support supply chains, and tax credits for production.
“It certainly raises the specter that Paul Pelosi could have access to some insider legislative information,” notes Craig Holman, a Capitol Hill lobbyist for Public Citizen. “This is the reason why there is a stock trading app that exclusively monitors Paul’s trading activity and then its followers do likewise.”
Paul, who could soon face jail time for a drunk driving accident that occurred over Memorial Day weekend, also sold 10,000 shares of Visa (worth up to $5 million) and 50 call options in Apple (worth up to $250,000). Click here to read more on Paul’s DUI.
Paul’s most recent purchase was 20,000 shares of Nvidia, a California-based multinational technology company that designs graphics processing units, application programming interface for data science, and high-performance computing. Nvidia, a global leader in AI, also develops system on a chip units for the automotive and mobile computing market.
Paul’s suspicious trading activities were exposed through a financial disclosure report filed by his wife, who not surprisingly has defended lawmakers’ (and their spouses’) rights to participate the stock market as part of America’s “free market economy.” Other lawmakers – including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) – believe there should be restrictions.
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Pelosi’s husband buys computer-chip stock ahead of $52B Senate vote this week
Nancy Pelosi’s husband buys millions in computer-chip stocks before big subsidy vote
Pelosi’s husband buys $5 million in chip stocks before Senate vote on chip subsidy bill