Research showing politicians made trades worth more than $1 billion in 2023 has bolstered a campaign to ban congressional leaders from stock trading, a practice that has long been criticized.
Those who have benefited from stock trading include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who reportedly made trades reaching approximately $100 million since 2019, with returns in 2023 that hit 65 percent, the“Mark Green, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security Committee, was found to have made gains of 122.2 percent,” the report noted.
“They say politicians should be banned from owning or trading stock entirely to prevent them working with inside information or taking decisions based on their own financial interests,” the Not surprisingly, Bachus’s friends on the committee cleared him of the charges, but not before he was forced to spend $422,000 in legal fees funded by his campaign account and another $209,000 from his legal expense trust. In true crony fashion, asreported, “the bulk of Bachus’s legal defense fund take came from corporations and PACs with ties to Alabama, including Mortgage American, Inc., Bryant Bank, and Citizens Bancorp of Winfield, Inc.