Ethics expert: DCCC chair appears corrupt
DCCC Chair Suzan Delbene may be corrupt according to an ethics expert, after failing to disclose up to $5.5 million in Microsoft stock sales for months.
Remember, this is not the first time Delbene failed to report stock sales.
In case you missed it…
Top Dem rep appears to violate federal law with late disclosure of million-dollar stock sales
Fox News
Thomas Catenacci
6/27/2023
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-dem-rep-appears-violate-federal-law-with-late-disclosure-million-dollar-stock-sales
Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., reported stock sales worth up to $5.5 million earlier this month, months after the transactions were executed and long after such sales are required to be reported under federal law.
On June 14, DelBene — who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, making her one of the highest-ranking House Democrats — filed a periodic transaction report showing her husband sold Microsoft stock worth between $1.25 million and $5.5 million in two transactions on Aug. 30, 2022, and March 1, respectively.
Under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, members of Congress are legally required to report securities transactions over $1,000 no later than 45 days after they or their spouse execute said transaction. DelBene waited to report the Microsoft stock sales 288 days and 105 days after they took place, her filing showed.
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“Oftentimes, if you aggregate members of Congress’ trades and transactions, they tend to over-perform the rest of us and over-perform the market,” Hedtler-Gaudette added. “There is definitely the appearance of impropriety and the appearance of potential corruption there that is corrosive to public trust in Congress and individual members of Congress. So, it’s a big problem.”
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Still, according to the House Ethics Committee instruction manual, members of Congress are required to report “each purchase, sale, or exchange involving stocks, bonds, commodities futures, or other securities” owned wholly or in part by them, their spouse or their dependent child when the amount of the transaction exceeds $1,000.
“The member missed the deadline for paying the stock transaction. That part is clear,” Kedric Payne, the vice president and general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told Fox News Digital.
“The constant violations of the law show that the disclosure requirement is not enough,” Payne continued. “The members cannot comply with the filing deadline and sometimes you still have the appearance of conflicts of interest. Therefore, there needs to be restricted where members are not allowed to own individual stocks.”
Read the full story here.