An outside ethics group filed ethics complaints Wednesday against seven U.S. House lawmakers — four Democrats and three Republicans — over failing to report stock trades.
One of the members of Congress — Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York — failed to file required reports on approximately 300 transactions, according to the complaint from the Campaign Legal Center.
Five of the seven lawmakers sit on the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
It’s the latest example of a bipartisan trend that has emerged almost 10 years after Congress overwhelmingly passed a law to provide transparency and show lawmakers aren’t profiting from their jobs: Members of Congress are ignoring the disclosure law.
Under the STOCK Act — Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act — lawmakers must file a report when they buy or sell stock. The form, known as a periodic transaction report, or PTR, must be submitted within 45 days of the transaction and is then made public. To date most allegations of STOCK Act violations involve members filing months — or in some cases more than a year — after the required window for submitting a report.
What makes the complaints filed Wednesday different is that it appears these members never filed reports at all. The Campaign Legal Center learned about the issues after reviewing financial disclosure forms for all members of Congress. It compared the 2019 forms with the 2020 forms and discovered discrepancies with these lawmakers’ holdings. But it did not find any PTRs to reflect the new transactions.
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Article URL : https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039287987/outside-ethics-group-says-7-house-lawmakers-didnt-disclose-stock-trades