US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi Sr., made a $1 million Tesla stock buy just before it was announced that the Biden administration is taking the federal car fleet electric.
Ethics watchdogs have raised their eyebrows over the timing of Pelosi’s Tesla stock purchase over concerns of the appearance of insider trading.
Mr. Pelosi reportedly purchased roughly $1 million in stock from Elon Musk’s electric car corporation last month. Just 30 days later, President Biden announced that the entirety of the federal vehicle fleet would be transitioned to electric automobiles.
John Pudner, the executive director of TakeBack.org – a conservative non-profit group that watchdogs special interest groups and the connected in Washington, DC – called the acquisition of Tesla stock by Mr. Pelosi “corrupt and unacceptable.”
One former federal prosecutor said of Pelosi’s Tesla buy, “Even if the actual charges are not provable beyond a reasonable doubt or trigger SEC action, the timing of trades with potential insider information always looks bad.”
In an obvious attempt to distance the Speaker from her husband’s actions – actions from which she, too, benefits financially, a spokesman for the California Democrat said that “[Speaker Pelosi’s] husband, not the Speaker, made the Tesla bets and the Speaker’s political relationships were irrelevant.”
Mrs. Pelosi isn’t the only California Democrat elected to federal office whose spouse has benefited from information made available to them, likely through their elected counterparts or close aides.
Controversy has swirled around both US Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and US Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), for the whole of their tenures regarding ironic windfalls their spouses “fell into” after their elections to office.
source nationalfile