Exposing The Pelosi Mafia in Washington D.C. – Nancy Pelosi’s Many Scandals
Exposing The Pelosi Mafia in Washington D.C. – Nancy Pelosi’s Many Scandals
by Liz Mumbi | Contributing Writer | Eternal Affairs Media
Nancy Pelosi has been plagued by many scandals in recent months. The most recent one is the insider trading accusations where she and her husband are said to have become extremely rich because of it.
For some time now, Nancy Pelosi has been busy trying to stop the dual-party efforts to make it illegal for congress members to do stock trading. She and her husband are believed to have earned a whopping $30 million by betting on the giant technology companies that Pelosi is in charge of regulating.
Late December 2021, the House Speaker revealed that Pelosi’s family generated millions when stocks such as Roblox, Micron technology, Salesforce and Google became bullish. Regarding this, some people say that Nancy Pelosi seems to be noncommittal when it comes to regulating big technology companies.
Afterward, Pelosi reassured her critics about the issue of lawmakers picking stocks dismissing it as just practicing a “free-market economy”. Reports say that these remarks angered Democratic insiders.
How they Bought the Tech Shares
Soon after telling reporters that lawmakers have the right to participate in a free-market economy at a news conference that took place on 15th of December 2021, two days later, her husband bought stock in Alphabet. According to Reuters, Speaker Pelosi’s husband made a bullish bet on Alphabet (Google-Parent) and made a profit of $5.3 million just a week before the house judiciary committee voted on regulating big tech.
Paul Pelosi bought 4000 shares of the company (Alphabet) at $1200 per share. He used a strategy called a call option. This method of buying stock enables investors to bet on stocks that do not belong to them. They do this by signing a contract that permits them to purchase stock at a future date at a price they have been promised.
He also bought Disney shares with a value of about $250,000. Later, on December 20, he bought shares in Slesforce worth about $1 million and Roblox values at about $500,000.
The following day, on 21st, he bought stock in Micron Technology and on the 22nd he bought Reoff xx. Within five days, Pelosi bought stock valued somewhere between $1,750,000 and $3,500,000.
The husband later disclosed that he also bought call options for NVIDIA, Apple and Amazon. Pelosi’s spokesperson said that the speaker was not involved and did not know beforehand about the transactions.
Paul Pelosi has made a name for himself in the stock investment spheres as a skilled stock trader to the extent that Iris, which is a social investing app, gives users the liberty to monitor his trades and get notifications whenever he purchases stocks to give them a chance to do the same.
In the year 2008, Pelosi received an offer from Visa where they offered her access to IPO stock shortly before legislation got to the house which Visa vehemently opposed. It is reported that Congresswoman Pelosi and her spouse purchased 5,000 shares at the measly price of $44 a share in complete disregard of the conflict of interest this decision created. Barely two days later, the price raised to $64 a share and Pelosi earned $100,000, as a result, owing to her Visa IPOs.
She Trusts Congress Members
The worst part about the whole thing is that when asked why she is being lenient on lawmakers and allowing them to trade stocks, she said that it is because she trusts them. However, there are a few congress members who are opposed to Pelosi’s attitude about stock trading. One of them is Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, who is planning on tabling legislation that will ban or control stock trading activities.
Jon Ossof, a Democratic senator, is deliberating on bringing a bill to the house that would make it illegal for lawmakers and their families to trade when they are in congress. Being the youngest senator in the house, Ossof could face strong opposition from the other members as well as Pelosi. This means that this stock trading menace will be hard to clamp down.
The director and founder of Revolving Door Project, Jeff Hauser, said that important policymakers can become wealthy but they should not be business owners. He added that when elected officials do stock picking, the public fears that the politician may have insider knowledge or their stock purchases will influence policymaking.
Representative Michael Cloud from Texas is drumming up support for two bills that are meant to prohibit congress members from taking part in stock trading.
One of the Richest Congress Members
Pelosi is believed to be among the wealthiest members of Congress. According to a financial analysis that was done by The Post, she has an enviable net worth of over $106 million. This figure was arrived at by calculating the average of the minimum and the maximum estimated value of her liabilities and assets. The Center for Responsive Politics applied this methodology and based its calculations on Pelosi’s most current financial disclosure which she provided in August of 2021. The disclosure indicates that the minimum sits at $40 while the maximum is $252 million.
Paul Pelosi, Pelosi’s spouse, is a businessman who oversees the investment and venture capital company known as financial Leasing Services and he has also bet on big companies many times regularly. These companies include Google, Apple and Amazon which are the companies that his wife is expected to be regulating.
The Pelosis own various homes around the country. They have a home in the expensive Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco, in Washington D.C, they have a condo in Georgetown neighborhood. Additionally, they have a vineyard in Napa Valley that is valued between at five million and 25 million dollars. This information is available in the financial disclosure reports that give members the choice to keep their net worth private by providing ranges of values instead of exact amounts.
Apart from her husband’s latest trading activities last month, the couple has acquired millions through personal stocks in a period spanning more than ten years.
Outperforming S&P 500
Even though there is no evidence proving that the Pelosis have used insider trading to get an edge when trading, most of the time, their portfolio performs better than the S&P 500. This sows doubts in people’s minds concerning whether Pelosi and other politicians who practice stock-picking think about the public’s well-being when there are making laws.
Pelosi’s holdings in only five technology companies helped then earn dividends and capital gains of between $5.6 million and $30.4 million from 2007 to 2020 based on the figures found on disclosures that are available to the public.
FinePrint established that the entire portfolio which comprises of firms like Roblox and Disney plus the big technology companies Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google, outdid the S&P 500 by 4.9% in the year 2019 and a massive 14.3% in 2020. Fineprint is an organization that advocates for more honesty about financial holdings by both the companies and the traders. They also discovered that in 2021, the Pelosi’s made a loss due to trading tech stocks since their portfolio performed lower than the S&P 500 by 15.5%.
Upon being asked if the chance to make a profit on trades can bring about a conflict of interest, Pelosi has firmly denied that it could happen and has vehemently opposed the suggestion of prohibiting personal stocks. Her spokesman Drew Hamill asserted that the trades are not a problem when asked to confirm the discovery by The Post that Paul Pelosi for the most part beat the market. He added that Nancy Pelosi does not own any stocks but rather they belong to her husband since the disclosures are marked SP. Allegedly, Pelosi still communicates with Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, about antitrust laws.
The Antitrust bill was proposed in an effort by the government to combat big tech’s unchecked power. It was the last part of the package named “Ending Platform Monopolies Act” which was meant to control how big tech companies provide their products to prevent them from using their size to control the market. However, the reaction of the market following the passing of the legislation was subtle. Prices of shares in these companies went up because investors realized that the house regulation posed no threat to the companies’ performance.
By saying that the stocks are in her husband’s name, it means that she is using him as an excuse and hiding behind his name to do as she wishes according to the previous director of the US Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub. He described the explanation as being “absolutely insulting”. He argued that the public cannot know whose shares they are unless the members of congress agree to record every conversation they have with their spouses which is basically impossible.
The Pelosi’s assets at the moment comprise of shares ranging between 5 and 25 million in Apple and Amazon plus between $1 and $5 million shares in Google based on their latest disclosures.
Although Pelosi lives in a district that is close to Silicon Valley, she has tried to separate herself from Big Tech. For instance, she is said to have refused to talk to Mark Zuckerberg on phone in 2019 following Facebook’s refusal to delete a video of her that had been tampered with. At the beginning of 2020, she appeared to support antitrust bill. She said that this legislation intends to deal with the fear that has been there on the two sides of the divide regarding the regulation of the power of technology companies. However, it is said that away from the public’s eyes, the speaker has been fostering her relationships with executives of big technology firms. New York Times reported that she spoke with Tim cook of Apple.
The STOCK Act which was made into law in 2012 was intended to control lawmaker’s trades. Regardless, a majority of congress members are still allowed to invest in trades that may go against their legislative obligations provided that they reveal the information in 45 days.
Even though Pelosi is widely criticized for stock trading, she is not the only one in congress who is doing it. The others include Blake Masters who is the senate candidate of Arizona, Chip Roy who is a Republican representative for Texas, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. For example, senators such as Kelly Loeffler and Richard Burr had insider information about the impending COVID epidemic and sold their shares in January 2020. No politician has been charged as of 2022 despite being investigated by the Federal prosecutors for violating the STOCK Act. In one recent incident, as many as 49 congress members and over 180 staff who work at the congress were discovered to have done insider trading.
It is difficult to prosecute politicians for doing insider trading using the information that they have access to due to the nature of their work. However, social media has not spared Pelosi. American’s on Twitter want her relieved of her duties due to this issue.
Nancy Pelosi’s Son Associated With 5 Controversial Companies and Interrogated by feds
As if what the couple is doing is not scandalous enough, their son Paul Pelosi Jr., has apparently been associated with about five organizations that are being investigated by the police for possible fraud.
It is reported that Pelosi’s 52 years old son was employed by different companies that were the focus of state and federal investigations and he also has connections to numerous convicted criminals, law-breakers and fraudsters but he has never been prosecuted.
One of the companies he is linked to is InfoUSA which is located in Omaha where he worked as the senior vice president. It is a database marketing firm that was probed years ago for the offense of selling data to swindlers. The buyers used the data to scam gullible and ailing elderly persons out of their funds. Pelosi was hired after the investigation came to a close. Nobody was arrested.
In 2009, Paul Jr., founded a company called Natural Blue Resources Inc together with a partner. It was an investment firm that had a mission that stated that it dealt with investing in eco-friendly companies plus an initiative to find, cleanse and sell water obtained from aquifers beneath the ground in New Mexico and other places with diminishing water sources.
However, the SEC purported that the firm was being operated by two incarcerated fraudsters in secret. In 2013, her son started working at FOGFuels, which is a biofuel firm. Just before he was appointed vice president, the person who started the company Paul Marshal was indicted by the SEC for supposedly stealing $3 million from old investors. Marshall was allegedly charged for spending the money on camps and private school tuition for his kids, alimony payments, child support and luxury vacations.
In 2014, her son was appointed independent director at a Los Angeles located firm called Targeted Medical Pharma. The company was later accused by FDA (Food and Drug Administration) of testing medicines on people without consent.
The two other shady companies where he worked were Corporate Governance Initiative which was a nonprofit group and the other one was Oroplata which is a company that mined lithium. Both of these companies were also involved in fraudulent dealings. Oroplata’s old management was accused of issuing fake shares worth $26 million and dividing some of them amongst themselves without the board’s consent.
He began working in the companies in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Before working in Oroplata, he became friends with Asa Saint Clair who was charged by the feds for operating a crypto scam while using a fake charity as a front. Pelosi Jr. allegedly endorsed the fraudulent crypto (IGObit) on its site by claiming that it was the greatest offering he had ever come across.
Indeed, the Pelosi’s family has been involved in many scandals in their quest to make money. Strengthening the STOCK Act and creating better legislation to prevent congress members from doing insider trading would be the best thing to do to curb this corruption.
