House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband bet up to $6 million on Google’s parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and NVIDIA, just before a House committee moved forward with multiple bills looking to limit the power of Big Tech corporations.
On June 18, Paul Pelosi exercised his Alphabet call options, which give him the right to buy 4,000 shares at a price of $1,200 per share, amounting to a total of $4.8 million, according to disclosed transactions. On May 21, he spent up to $250,000 on 50 Apple calls with a strike price of $100, and spent up to $1 million on 20 Amazon calls with a strike price of $3,000, both of which expire on June 17, 2022.
Fox Business reported that Paul Pelosi “did not immediately respond” for comment, while a spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi’s office said, “The speaker has no involvement or prior knowledge of these transactions,” adding that “The speaker does not own any stock.”
Former Democratic House Representative Jill Long Thompson argued that Nancy Pelosi’s husband likely didn’t violate the STOCK Act, claiming that information regarding the legislation is publicly available and — despite his marriage to the House Speaker — he probably wouldn’t “have any information that someone else wouldn’t.”
“Members of Congress make it clear what their positions are on these issues and the fact that they’re working on a piece of legislation that would be public information,” Thompson said.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act is designed to prevent insider trading, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2012. It prohibits the use of non-public information for private profit, including the use of insider information for profit by members of Congress.- READ MORE
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