Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for a ban on lawmakers trading individual stocks, taking a shot at former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in the process.
“I am going to start pushing for a single-stock trading ban, because it is the credibility of the House and the Senate,” Bessent said Wednesday on Bloomberg TV.
“You look at some of these eye-popping returns — whether it is Rep. Pelosi, Sen. Wyden — every hedge fund would be jealous of them. And the American people deserve better than this,” Bessent added.
His comments come as momentum for a ban on members of Congress trading individual stocks has ramped up amid increasing public scrutiny of stock trades. Current law prohibits insider trading by lawmakers and requires more disclosures, but critics say the law does not go far enough.
“People shouldn’t come to Washington to get rich, they should come to serve the American people, and it brings down trust in the system because I can tell you that if any private citizen traded this way, the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] would be knocking on their door,” Bessent said.
Pelosi has come under arguably the most scrutiny for highly successful trades made by her husband, Paul Pelosi, which she is required to report in financial disclosures.
Pelosi spokesperson Ian Krager told The Hill in response to Bessent: “Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks and has no knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
She has also endorsed a bill that advanced in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month that would bar not only members, their spouses, and their dependent children from buying and trading stocks, but also the president and vice president. Since the requirement would not apply until the start of the elected officials’ next terms, it would exempt President Trump if enacted.
Trump has said he would support a stock trade ban, but he attacked Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) for his support of the bill. Hawley later said Trump was under the mistaken impression it would apply to him.
Over in the House, members of both parties have called for stock trade bans, with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) pledging to start a discharge petition to force a vote on another stock trade ban bill.
Wyden’s stock portfolio, meanwhile, saw a stunning 123.8 percent gain in 2024, according to data from the financial analysis platform Unusual Whales reported in the Salem Business Journal.
Wyden, in response to Bessent’s comments, pointed to a report from the New York Times that the Office of Government Ethics had not fully complied with an agreement to divest his financial assets.
“Nobody working for Donald Trump has any business pretending to care about ethics or the stock trading ban I support. If Scott Bessent gave a damn about the public interest, why is he holding a massive farm that puts him in a position to gain from Trump’s trade deals with China?” Wyden posted on X.
“Bessent is fuming that I blew the whistle on the fact that he’s hiding a huge Epstein file at the Treasury Department. Thousands of pages worth of Epstein’s bank records with names. Until he releases it, he’s just running interference for Epstein’s pedophile ring,” Wyden added.
It’s not only Democrats who have come under scrutiny for stock trading, though.
A report from the House Ethics Committee last month found that Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) violated the lower chamber’s code of conduct when his wife traded stocks for a company in Kelly’s district after the congressman learned nonpublic information about the firm.
And Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) has caught heat for continuing to trade stocks despite saying he wants to ban member stock trading.
Bresnahan has introduced a stock trading ban bill and says he has no involvement with the trades that his financial advisers have made on his behalf. While he has said he wants to keep his current financial advisers and create a blind trust that would put a more stringent firewall between him and those trades, he has found problems in crafting that plan with the House Ethics Committee.
Updated at 5:31 p.m. EDT