As the video above points out, insider stock trading is rampant in Congress, and it’s a way for elected officials who are supposed to be doing the people’s business to become rich.
Insider trading is a federal offense and has a straightforward definition: it’s “the illegal practice of trading on the stock exchange to one’s advantage through having access to confidential information.” The keywords here are “confidential information.” That is defined as information that is not well-known or available to the general public. The free market system operates on a level playing field when information is available in the open marketplace.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors prosecute violations of insider trading rules. The SEC prohibits insider trading under Rule 10b-5, which applies to “corporate officers and directors or other insider employees from using confidential corporate information to reap a profit (or avoid a loss) by trading in the Company’s stock. This rule also prohibits “tipping” confidential corporate information to third parties.”
Insider trading under the Rule has specific allowable provisions, including some corporate officers if they follow specific rules. What insider trading exempts is Congressmen, the big problem that has allowed elected officials to become millionaires during their time in office.
As this Forbes article points out, “In late March 2020, with the stock market reeling from the effects of coronavirus, an explosive story took over the news: Members of the U.S. Senate, who had received early briefings on the potential effects of the coronavirus, had dumped stock positions, allowing them to avoid massive losses.”
The video above gives us one example: Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida, who made a killing on just one trade using insider information. 
She is one example of the greed in Congress that precedes Trump and has been around for decades. The election of Trump in his second term makes insider trading and the looting of the federal government more common and more corrupt.
According to the site Quiver Quantitative, it’s possible to look up members of Congress to see what they have been doing in the stock market, their holdings, and their net worth. Another representative from Florida in the House, Lois Frankel (D-Fla), has made 1542 trades since 2013 for a total trading volume of $12.5 million. That is not profits but the amount of the trades: gains and losses. The site does not say if she trades herself or uses a broker, but someone is busy paying or receiving significant commissions.
The Quiver Quantitative website is interesting since it has the dates the trades were made and when they were reported. The most significant benefit of insider trading is to trade in or out of a stock before the news becomes public, so speed is of the essence. Unfortunately, and by design, the public does not have this speedy access, but the Quiver site is the best site available for this type of insider trading information.
Some of the Greediest Members of Congress
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla) was CEO of Columbia/HCA, the company that was the target of the largest Medicare-Medicaid fraud in U.S. history. Scott is also an active trader.
Scott has a net worth of $544 million and made trades from 2019 to the present with a value of $233.7 million. The bulk of Scott’s portfolio is in tax-free muni bonds. With his net worth, Scott wants to avoid paying taxes.
Scott is a master white-collar criminal and Trump backer. According to Wikipedia, “Scott was pressured to resign as chief executive of Columbia/HCA in 1997. During his tenure as chief executive, the company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs. The U.S. Department of Justice won 14 felony convictions against the company, which was fined $1.7 billion in what was at the time the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history.” When Scott’s company was fined by the US Justice Department, he walked away with a bonus of $300 million, according to the Sun-Sentinal newspaper. That was money he used to run for governor of Florida and then on to the U.S. Senate, where he is in the company of many white-collar criminals.
The outspoken Marjorie Taylor-Green, with a net worth of $22.2 million, made trades of $6.2 million since 2021. Her most recent holdings are from the tech firms that occupied Trump’s front row during his inauguration ceremony. These include META, Nextera Energy, Invidia, Visa, AMD, Amazon (Jeff Bezos), ASML Holdings, Berkshire Hathaway, Caterpillar, Alphabet, IBIT Shares Bitcoin, JP Morgan Chase, and Palo Alto Networks.
Kelly Loeffler, the Republican ex-senator from Georgia, whose husband is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, has been an inactive trader since September 2020. Her trading record showed she made 281 trades valued at $118 million. Her net worth is estimated at $800 million. In exchange for her and her husband’s generous campaign contributions to Trump, she was appointed to lead the Small Business Administration, where she can use her tax evasion skills to greater benefit.
Loeffler is an excellent example of conflicts of interest and greed. As the earlier Forbes article notes, “No one had ditched more than newly appointed Georgia Republican Kelly Loeffler, who got rid of more than $20 million of shares from late January to March 2020. Three months after becoming a Senator, Loeffler was already a poster child for Washington swampiness.”
What Does Your Congressman Do During the Day? Trade Stocks.
So when Trump tells his followers that he wants to “drain the swamp” and other empty slogans, his followers should remember that Trump is the leader of insider trading, fraud, lying, and evading the law. Hi is the epitome of conflicts of interest, and he and all of his billionaire Cabinet appointments will definitely leave office richer than when they entered. That is a given, and that is why they accepted the posts.
Trump says, “Let the looting begin,” but taxpayers should know that the Deep State looting has already been going on in Washington for decades by elected officials in broad daylight. It will only get worse under Trump.
