President Donald Trump’s trade wars and the ensuing financial market whiplash are sparking fresh scrutiny on Capitol Hill over lawmakers’ stock trades. But it comes as Congress operates without a functioning in-house ethics watchdog and a lack of real penalties for lawmakers who fail to make financial disclosures.
Members of Congress bought and sold stock in recent weeks in companies affected by shifting tariffs and other administration policies, including Apple, Amazon, and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) bought thousands of dollars in stocks including Apple, Tesla, and Nike on April 8 and 9, right before Trump announced a 90-day pause on many tariffs and markets surged. Greene raised eyebrows for “buying the dip,” though Trump acolytes outside Congress could have also benefited: Trump posted earlier that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
Public documents show Reps. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), and Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) dumped Tesla stock last month as Trump ally Musk’s company floundered.
Gottheimer, who is running for governor of New Jersey, also reported numerous trades including the sale of alcohol conglomerate Diageo, while Rep. Tim Moore (R-N.C.) purchased stock in Ford Motor Co. this year, disclosures show.
Given the 45-day reporting lag, most of the recently-disclosed stock trades are from March or earlier, before this month’s financial volatility.
“We’re going to learn a lot more in the next month,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), an opponent of congressional stock trading. Levin and other Democrats have raised questions about whether any members of Congress were tipped off about Trump’s tariff pause — including at the April 8 National Republican Congressional Committee dinner.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has also sounded the alarm about House Republicans potentially profiting off early Trump information. Levin said this is an encouraging signal that Democrats will take action on congressional stock trading if they retake the House next year.
Members’ trades are legal if they don’t involve insider information. They must report trades within 45 days to their respective legislative chambers.
“The problem is, you are always going to have an appearance of conflict of interest whenever members trade,” said Kedric Payne, the Campaign Legal Center’s vice president, general counsel, and senior director of ethics.
Violations are limited and rare. The penalty for a late filing: $200. A sitting lawmaker has never been successfully prosecuted for violating that law.
“The penalties are less than a slap on the wrist,” said Meredith McGehee, a longtime advocate for governmental and congressional ethics.
Watchdog neutered?
Capitol Hill’s in-house watch dog organization, the Office of Congressional Conduct (formerly the Office of Congressional Ethics), can’t yet operate because it lacks a chair four months into the new Congress.
The office is charged with overseeing House lawmakers’ stock trades and other ethics matters. The speaker names the chair, while the minority leader names the co-chair.
Jeffries has submitted his nominations for the office, according to a person familiar who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that hasn’t been made public. That leaves it up to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to make his picks. Johnson’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on why the panel’s leadership hasn’t been named.
The Campaign Legal Center and other pro-transparency groups raised alarm that the lack of OCC leadership has “effectively closed the office.”
“For the first time in the OCC’s history, it cannot take any action to fulfill its mission of reviewing allegations of misconduct,” the groups wrote in a letter to House members on Monday.
Some lawmakers and outside groups have long called for a complete ban on congressional stock trading, even before the OCC was limited. They argue that the $200 penalty for disclosing a trade late isn’t enough to dissuade lawmakers from trying to obscure shady stock trades.
“What we’re advocating for, they should not own individual stocks at all,” Payne said in an interview.
Payne and other ethics advocates say past examples of late filings, with little or no repercussions, offer evidence that the current requirements fall short.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) disclosed a year later stock purchases his wife made in February 2020 of Gilead Sciences, which made a treatment for COVID-19 that proved lucrative for the company.
Payne’s group filed a complaint about the tardy filing with the Senate Ethics Committee. He says nothing came of it.
Seeking a ban
The bipartisan lawmakers agitating for an all-out ban failed to get a vote on their legislation scheduled under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), an active trader, and later under ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who said he’d beef up the rules but failed to do so before he was ousted in 2023.
Johnson hasn’t taken a public position on the issue. But he hasn’t personally reported any stock trades.
McGehee, who lobbied in support of the creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics, said Republicans’ opposition has grown to the ethics watchdog.
“Republicans view concern about ethics rules as impediments to enacting the Trump agenda,” she said.
Some of the House GOP’s most vocal hardliners do support a ban, though. The issue attracts strange bedfellows: hard-right Republicans like Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and moderate Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) joined Democrats across the ideological spectrum to co-sponsor a ban (H.R.1679) last Congress.
The issue is popping up already in Senate and House midterm races.
“The court that matters is the court of public opinion,” Levin said, predicting that members who enrich themselves with non-public information will lose their constituents’ trust.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) jumped on stock disclosures in a recent campaign email. He touted his support for legislation to ban lawmakers from trading stock in individual companies.
“There’s renewed momentum building to finally get this done,” Ossoff’s appeal said.
Greg Giroux in Washington also contributed to this story.
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