(FreedomBeacon.com)- Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump took direct aim at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this time focusing on her delay and then flip-flop on bringing a bill to the House floor that would ban all lawmakers from trading individual stocks.
For quite some time now, Pelosi has scoffed at the idea that a bill that would ban such trading was necessary or even right. Many have commented that the reason the House Speaker has said this is that her husband, Paul Pelosi, has mysteriously profited from trading many stocks around the same time that Pelosi was involved in legislation that created a favorable trading situation for him.
In late September, though, Pelosi flip-flopped on that issue, saying that such a bill could be brought to the House floor for a full vote. She shared the draft legislation of the bill, but then said that not only did they need more time to craft the bill, but that there weren’t enough votes for it to pass.
That’s what Trump criticized over the weekend when he said at a rally held in Mesa, Arizona:
“Look at her stocks. I mean, she did better than Warren Buffet. I don’t know about her husband. I don’t know who the hell’s running that deal.
“And now she doesn’t want to change it, where they’re allowed to get inside information.”
Pelosi and her husband haven’t been directly accused of using insider information to profit in stock trades, but many media outlets — and politicians — have pointed out that Paul Pelosi’s stock trades are often well-timed around pertinent legislation that passes through the House.
The House Speaker in the past has said that she doesn’t discuss House business with her husband, and that her husband doesn’t discuss his trades with her before he executes them. That’s quite hard to believe, though.
The fact that a bill that would ban legislators from trading individual stocks won’t be brought for a floor vote before the midterm elections has angered many people, including some Democrats.
One of those people is Representative Abigail Spanberger from Virginia. She issued a statement recently that read:
“This moment marks a failure of House leadership — and it’s yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill, as I have long made known.”
One of the more recent trades executed by Paul Pelosi that has come into question involved him selling shares of a company that makes computer chips. He profited millions off the trade, which occurred right before the House took a vote on a bill that provided subsidies to companies in the industry.
As such, Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, has said that lawmakers need to conduct a “thorough investigation and look at what is the proper role for members of Congress” when it comes to trading individual stocks.
He added that he believes Pelosi shouldn’t be involved at all in writing that bill.
