Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who sits on the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, said during an interview with The Daily Wire that Congressmembers should have to defer to third parties in order to trade stocks because Congressmembers “have access to too much information that the American people simply do not have.”
“I do not think that members or their spouses should be actively trading,” Donalds said. “I think that if their investments are held by managers, and the managers are authorized to trade on their behalf, that’s acceptable.”
“If a member or spouse executes a trade on their own,” he continued, “either by doing it directly or calling their broker to do the trade, then they have to obviously disclose that immediately.”
“I should not be at a trading platform. I have access to too much information that the American people simply do not have,” he added. “I should not be trading shares. I should not be advising on trading shares.”
Donalds’ comments come shortly after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) disclosed in regulatory filing that her husband purchased more than $2 million in Tesla stock earlier this month.
“In a periodic transaction filing, Pelosi disclosed her husband, Paul Pelosi, exercised 25 call options on Thursday to buy 2,500 shares of Tesla stock, worth nearly $2.2 million at the time; the options were set to expire on Friday,” Forbes reported on March 22. “It’s not the first high-priced options bet Pelosi has placed on big-tech stocks: Last year, Paul Pelosi reportedly made about $5 million on options contracts tied to Alphabet stock.”
