House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to face blowback for her comments defending lawmakers who trade in stocks even while having access to potentially market-moving information.
'We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that,' Pelosi responded Wednesday when asked whether Members of Congress and their spouses should be banned from trading individual stocks.
She was responding to questions about a Business Insider report on dozens of lawmakers who have failed to meet requirements of the STOCK Act by failing turn in timely reports on their asset sales and purchases.
Some of those lawmakers held back information on trades in pharmaceutical stocks even as the nation battles the pandemic and Congress pushes out trillions in relief. Others did not file reports on time for sales and purchases of bitcoin or stocks in defense contractors.
It all leads to a situation that Walter Shaub, the former top White House ethics officer in the Obama administration, blasted as leading to an array of potential conflicts.
'We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that,' Pelosi said when asked whether lawmakers should be able to trade in individual stocks
'In reality, it's not exactly a free market when she has inside access to information from government experts that isn't public, that can affect influence their trading activity that the public doesn't have access to,' he told CNN's The Lead on Thursday.
'It's not exactly free when we're locked outside of the kind of information that members of Congress get all the time,' he said. Shaub added: 'This isn't a right, left or center issue. This is a right and wrong issue and it's objectively clear that Nancy Pelosi is wrong.'
Pelosi herself has
