Monday, during an interview with Washington, D.C.’s WJLA, Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer said the revisions that weakened the STOCK Act that his reporting helped initiate meant new legislation might be necessary.

Anchor Kristine Frazao said, “Senator Richard Burr has stepped away from his post as Intelligence Committee Chairman, as a federal investigation plays out into a major sell-off of stocks he made on the heels of the coronavirus crisis. One week later, the stock market plummeted. Questions have also been raised about trades made by Senators Kelly Loeffler, Jim Inhofe and Dianne Feinstein’s husband.”

Schweizer said, “Did somebody have access to market-moving information before anyone else did? Did they make some unusual trades that they hadn’t made before?”

Frazao continued, “Author Peter Schweizer’s 2011 book, ‘Throw Them All Out,’ exposed the trend of insider trading in Congress.”

In a November 2011 clip from “60 Minutes,” Schweizer said, “We know that during the financial crisis of 2008, they were getting out before the rest of America really knew what was going on.”

Frazao said, “After this and other reports, Congress came together to pass the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK Act.”

She added, “But eight years later not a single member of Congress has been prosecuted under the law, and in fact the year after it passed, some amendments were made to it by Congress that quietly rolled back much some of its power.”

Schweizer said, “It softened the language about what insider trading was, and it also softened reporting requirements that members of Congress and staffs had to report in terms of the trades they were making.”

He added, “These same legislators are crafting these massive bailout bills that are going to benefit certain industries, and they are free to trade stocks in companies that they are writing legislation for to bail out.”

Frazao said, “He says a new law may be needed to further restrict the ability of lawmakers to own stock at all.”

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