More than 2,600 federal officials either own or have traded stock in companies their agencies oversee, according to a damning report by the Wall Street Journal.
The report also found that officials frequently traded stock in companies shortly before their agencies announced enforcement actions that affected the price of those companies.
At the Department of Defense for example, some officials held stock in Chinese companies that the U.S. was considering blacklisting.
Tech stocks seem to be particularly popular for federal officials to trade, with the Wall Street Journal finding over 1,800 officials who own or traded Google (through parent company Alphabet), Amazon, Apple, and Facebook (now known as Meta), a trend that coincides with the government ramping up its scrutiny of Big Tech.
Via the Wall Street Journal:
• While the government was ramping up scrutiny of big technology companies, more than 1,800 federal officials reported owning or trading at least one of four major tech stocks: Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
• More than five dozen officials at five agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, reported trading stock in companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions, such as charges and settlements, against those companies.
• At the Defense Department, officials in the office of the secretary reported collectively owning between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies on average each year examined by the Journal. Some held stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. was considering blacklisting the companies.
Washington D.C., where the apparatus of the federal government is located, is rife with allegations of insider trading. Nancy Pelosi, who in 2021 rejected a bill to prevent members of congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks, has come under particular scrutiny after it emerged that her husband purchased stock in a semiconductor company just before the Senate was set to vote on subsidies for the semiconductor industry.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.