House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is facing questions about whether her husband, Paul Pelosi, made stock purchases based on information she gave him.
During an exchange with a reporter on Thursday, Pelosi responded with “no” and “absolutely not” when asked about whether she handed information to her husband, a multi-millionaire California stock investor.
In recent months, Pelosi has drawn scrutiny over her husband’s moves on the stock market.
Last week, her office disclosed that Paul Pelosi recently exercised 200 call options, or 20,000 shares, of semiconductor company Nvidia at a strike price of $100 with an expiration of June 17 worth between $1 million and $5 million.
The stock purchase came weeks before a Senate voted to advance a bill that would subsidize domestic semiconductor production in a 64-34 vote. The measure would provide roughly $52 billion in subsidies to chip companies, including Nvidia and Intel, to increase production in the United States.
“It certainly raises the specter that Paul Pelosi could have access to some insider legislative information,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist, told the Daily Caller about Paul Pelosi’s stock activity. “This is the reason why there is a stock trading app that exclusively monitors Paul’s trading activity and then its followers do likewise.”
Earlier this week, a Pelosi spokesperson said that the House speaker doesn’t directly own any stocks and “has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
“To be clear, insider trading is already a serious federal criminal and civil violation and the Speaker strongly supports robust enforcement of the relevant statutes by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Drew Hammill, her spokesman, also
said. “The Speaker led the House in passing the bipartisan Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which would subject federal judges to similar disclosure requirements as those in the STOCK Act. President Biden signed this bill into law in May. ”
As for the chip bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters this week that he won’t vote in favor of the motion until he had seen the text of the bill.
“Myself, I’m not going to vote to proceed until I know what we’re proceeding to. But there are others in our conference who may decide otherwise,” he said,
according to the Wall Street Journal.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote that it’s necessary to pass the bill to promote U.S. economic stability.
“If the US lost access to advanced semiconductors (none made in US) in the first year, GDP could shrink by 3.2 percent and we could lose 2.4 million jobs,” he
wrote in a series of Twitter posts. “The GDP loss would 3X larger ($718 B) than the estimated $240 B of US GDP lost in 2021 due to the ongoing chip shortage.”
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