Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reportedly sold 30,000 shares of stock in Alphabet, Google’s parent company, just a month before the Justice Department filed an antitrust action against the technology business.
In the complaint filed on Tuesday, federal officials said that Google monopolizes the tools that website publishers use to sell adverts and that businesses use to acquire commercials.
According to federal reports, Pelosi, who resigned as Speaker but remains a member of Congress, sold 10,000 shares of Alphabet Class A stock on December 20, December 21, and December 28, for a total transaction value of $1.5 million to $3 million.
On January 12, the legislator digitally signed the disclosures.
As word of the antitrust case spread, the company’s stock price fell 6% this week after Pelosi’s decision to sell.
Pelosi’s stock trading history first came to light in 2020, when it was revealed that she and her husband had made millions of dollars in the stock market while she held positions of power in Congress. This led to accusations of insider trading, as Pelosi had access to confidential information that could have affected the stock market.
Pelosi has defended her actions, stating that she and her husband had made the investments based on the advice of a financial advisor and that they had not used any confidential information to inform their trades.
The issue has led to calls for stricter ethical guidelines for members of Congress when it comes to stock trading.
Some have suggested that members of Congress should be required to disclose their stock trades more frequently and to recuse themselves from voting on legislation that could affect the stock prices of companies in which they have invested.
Such was the contention of Josh Hawley (R-Mo), when he recently unveiled the PELOSI act, which would seek to ban members of the executive and legislative branch from actively trading stocks while in office.
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