BI: Jay Chen failed to disclose investments in Moderna and Pfizer stocks
Business Insider reports Jay Chen “failed to report his investments in two pharmaceutical giants behind leading COVID-19 vaccines,” in both his 2021 and 2022 disclosure forms.
Chen talks a big game railing against pharmaceutical companies, but he conveniently omitted from his financial disclosure form that he has invested thousands in them, a potential violation of federal law.
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A California Democrat running for Congress failed to disclose investments in Moderna and Pfizer stocks
Madison Hall
Business Insider
July 28, 2022
A Democrat in California running for U.S. Congress failed to report his investments in two pharmaceutical giants behind leading COVID-19 vaccines, Insider found.
Jay Chen, who’s running against Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in California’s 45th Congressional District, did not reveal until July 26 that he owned thousands of dollars of stock in both Moderna and Pfizer — hours after Insider contacted him with records indicating his ownership of his investments.
Federal law requires congressional candidates to publicly disclose their stock holdings in a certified, public report soon after announcing their candidacies.
Congress is actively considering banning members of Congress from trading stocks altogether because of widespread violations of the law and repeated examples of financial conflicts of interest.
Chen’s campaign manager, Lindsay Barnes, told Insider in an email that the error was the result of “an honest misunderstanding” of disclosure requirements, and that that Chen sold his stock in the two companies in early 2021.
Chen had previously disclosed his Pfizer and Moderna stock holdings in an obscure state-level document, known as a “California Form 700,” that he filed because of service on the Mt. San Antonio College’s board of trustees.
Chen’s California disclosure, which was filed in April 2021 and obtained by Insider, noted that he personally invested between $2,000 and $10,000 in both Pfizer and Moderna stocks in late 2020, immediately before the two companies began shipping millions of dozes of their COVID-19 vaccines.
When Chen, as a congressional candidate, submitted his annual federal financial disclosure to Congress in August 2021, he included each of his 31 investments listed on the California Form 700 — except for the Moderna and Pfizer stocks. He made no mention of them in his 2022 disclosure, either.
“Due to an honest misunderstanding in moving between state to federal disclosure requirements, the campaign unintentionally omitted the transaction within its federal disclosure,” Barnes said. “As soon as the campaign realized this discrepancy, we immediately amended the report.”
A congressional candidate could be fined if he or she “knowingly and willfully falsifies a statement or fails to file a statement” in accordance with US House guidance, although officials rarely pursue such investigations.
While candidates and members of Congress are required to submit financial disclosures to the House Ethics Committee, the committee does not proactively check to ensure the filings are complete and error-free.
Compare that to the federal government’s campaign finance sector, where the Federal Election Commission has workers investigating the minutiae of each and every campaign’s financial disclosures to ensure they’re complying with federal laws and rules.
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Read the full story from Business Insider, here.