Paul Pelosi are trading large with a wealth of hypocrisy

Democrats have carved out quite a niche for themselves as the party of the have-nots, even if it’s mostly a hypocritical marketing ploy. Bernie Sanders, the socialist, lives a pretty non-socialist life with a town house, a vacation home and all the comforts of the bourgeoisie while he claims to champion the proletariat.

There’s no shortage of similar examples. Recall the late Massachusetts senator and liberal icon Teddy Kennedy’s support of forced busing while sending his kids to private school back in the 1970s. The latest of these “freedom for me but not for thee” ­hypocrisies involves the matter of Paul Pelosi, the octogenarian hubby of Nancy Pelosi, the octogenarian lefty speaker of the House of Representatives.

Paul Pelosi has been killing it in the stock market in recent years, according to disclosure forms, for reasons that could well go beyond some innate ability to sense swings in the markets. His latest home run: Snapping up between $1 million and $5 million in shares of computer chip darling Nvidia (via exercising call options) on June 17, according to disclosure documents.

His timing, once again, was impeccable: He executed the trades as Congress moves closer to passing tens of billions of dollars in corporate-welfare subsidies for US semiconductor production. That’s good news for Nvidia and shareholders like Paul Pelosi. Since his bet, shares have risen nearly 10%. By my math, he could have pocketed a quick $500,000.

Maybe Paul Pelosi knows a thing or two about stock trading. Or maybe he’s just a savant, like Hillary Clinton, who years ago credited her reading of The Wall Street Journal with being able to make big bucks trading esoteric cattle futures.

One problem with giving Paul Pelosi the benefit of the doubt is that enough of his winners involve companies that appear to have been benefiting from legislation that his wife, as the powerful lefty house speaker, has a hand in.

Ummm . . .

Paul and Nancy have been married for going on 59 years. He’s been at Nancy’s side during her rise to the pinnacle of Democratic Party leadership. She has certainly benefited from his career as a successful Silicon Valley investor.

The reason we know about Paul Pelosi’s market prowess is because members of Congress are required to disclose such investments, and since he’s married to Nancy, his trades, under the disclosure rules, are her trades.

And it explains why Nancy ­Pelosi is one of the richest members of Congress — with an estimated net worth of more than $100 million on an annual salary of about $200,000.

The power couple have a vineyard in tony Napa Valley plus many of the perks of wealth and status. She represents the dysfunctional congressional district in and around San Francisco, which means she’s regularly attacking wealth creators while virtue signaling about the poor and downtrodden — who remain so ­under her watch.

It’s limousine liberalism on steroids. Happily for them, their allegiance to lefty politics somehow stops when it comes to businesses involving Paul.

Paul is a longtime venture capitalist. Where’s Nancy on eliminating that controversial, anti-progressive venture-capitalist tax break known as the carried-interest deduction, which gives favorable tax treatment to him and other gazillionaires?

M.I.A.

Where is she on making sure members of Congress or their spouses can’t benefit from an ­information edge — particularly on market-moving legislation?

Here, Nancy is a born-again capitalist. She and her hubby “should be able to participate in that,” she said last year when asked about her hubby’s trading.

Insider trading — or trading stocks on material, non-public information — is a crime, of course. Recent legislation puts people who use information they learned based on their position in Congress (or their spouse’s) in the same slimy bucket.

But most lawmakers who have been investigated for allegedly ­using their position to trade almost always never face criminal charges. See the case of North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Lawmakers get private briefings, as Burr did before selling stock just before the pandemic rocked the markets. They can and do point to the fact that the same information was swirling around on the Internet or business television.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul dumped his stock in semiconductor firm Nvidia amid backlash just before the Senate passed the CHIPS bill to drum up domestic semiconductor chip production, according to a periodic report released Tuesday.

On June 17 Paul Pelosi exercised call options to buy 20,000 shares worth between $1 million and $5 million, ahead of the vote on the CHIPS plus bill which would inject $52 billion into the semiconductor market. The move drew bipartisan backlash and renewed calls for a congressional stock ban. 

But on Tuesday, the day before the Senate passed the CHIPS bill, Paul Pelosi sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia at an average price of $165.05 with a total loss of $341,365, according to a periodic transaction report released Tuesday. 

Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill said in a statement: 'Mr. Pelosi bought options to buy stock in this company more than a year ago and exercised them on June 17, 2022.'

'As always, he does not discuss these matters with the Speaker until trades have been made and required disclosures must be prepared and filed. Mr. Pelosi decided to sell the shares at a loss rather than allow the misinformation in the press regarding this trade to continue,' he added. 

The Senate passed the CHIPS bill Wednesday and the House is expected to pass it on Thursday.  

Former Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher said Thursday on CNBC  Speaker Nancy Pelosi  and her husband 'appear' to have taken advantage of insider information with Paul's many lucrative stock trades. 

Responding to news that Democrats would soon release the framework for a long-awaited stock pan proposal, Fisher said on CNBC's Squawk Box: 'Clearly people have taken advantage of insider information forever. I'm not against their tapping that down. I'm sorry to see that Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi and others appear - all appearance right now we don't know the facts - to have taken advantage of insider information.' 

'Something needs to be done.'

The stock ban framework would force members of Congress, their spouses and senior staff to place assets in either a qualified blind trust or completely sell them off. Lawmakers, spouses and staff would still be able to hold mutual funds. 

Leadership's goal is to get the legislation through the House in September, according to Punchbowl News. 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who as head of the House Administration Committee has been tasked with reviewing the different proposals, told DailyMail.com on Friday the framework would be out 'in the coming weeks.'

'Has your husband ever made a stock purchase or sale based on information he's received from you?' a reported asked the speaker in her weekly briefing last week. 

'No,' she scoffed. 'Absolutely not.' Pelosi then walked away from the podium.

The Pelosis are one of the wealthiest couples in Congress and Paul Pelosi has been dubbed one of the most prolific stock traders of all time. The speaker's office frequently notes that Nancy herself does not own any stock.

For months there has been broad bipartisan consensus behind banning individual stock trades for members and their spouses. Lawmakers in both parties have put forth a slew of bills since Pelosi first expressed a cool openness to such a ban in February, not one of which has made it to the floor.   

Last Wednesday Sen. Josh Hawley wrote a letter asking Democrats to hold a hearing on banning stock trading.

'This issue of whether and how Members of Congress engage in various financial transactions deserves scrutiny by the Committee,' Hawley wrote to Sen. Gary Peters, chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

'In 2020 Speaker Pelosi and her husband outperformed the S&P 500 by a whopping 14.3 percent,' Hawley said. Ninety percent of actively managed investment funds fail to beat the market, according to a report. 

After initial resistance, Pelosi changed tune in February and said she would get behind a stock ban if it was not just aimed at Congress but all of government. 

'It has to be government-wide,' the California Democrat told reporters. 'The judiciary has no reporting. The Supreme Court has no disclosure. It has no reporting of stock transactions, and it makes important decisions every day.' 

It was not resounding support, but it was a change of tune from three months earlier when Pelosi was actively against cutting off her husband and the rest of Congress' stock trading power. 

'We're a free market economy. '[Lawmakers] should be able to participate in that,' she said in December.  

Despite broad support, some Democrats lay blame at leadership for stopping such bills from even getting a vote. 

'The people who control the calendar don't want to bring it to the floor,' said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a moderate who authored a bipartisan proposal to force members to put their assets in a blind trust.  'The people who control committees of jurisdiction don't want to bring it to the floor.'

Paul Pelosi, owner of Financial Leasing Services, has amassed a personal fortune of around $135 million. 

In 2021, the House Speaker is ranked as the 14th wealthiest member of Congress with an estimated net worth of at least $46,123,051, according to Insider. 

Paul Pelosi's lucrative stock trades have prompted social investing app Iris allows users to track the couple's trades and be notified every time Paul makes a purchase so that they can do the same. 

And popular Twitter account @NancyTracker, which tracked Pelosi's investments, was banned from the social media network.

The 2012 STOCK Act bans members of Congress from using 'any nonpublic information derived from the individual's position ... or gained from performance of the individual's duties, for personal benefit.'   

It also required lawmakers to report any publicly disclose any transaction of stocks, bond, commodities futures, and other securities within 45 days, rather than once per year. 

Pelosi is far from alone in her husband's stock trades - more than 220 other representatives and senators, around 40% of Congress, held together at least $225 million in stock assets during 2020, according to an Insider investigation.

An Insider investigation found that 49 members and 182 congressional staffers were late to disclose trades from January through September 2021, violating the STOCK Act.