Nancy Pelosi fled her weekly press conference Thursday after being asked whether her husband Paul has ever traded stocks based on information the house speaker has relayed to him.
“No absolutely not,” Pelosi said in response to a reporter who asked if her “husband ever made a stock purchase or sale based on information received from you.”
The speaker’s comments come on the heels of the Daily Caller News Foundation first reporting on a financial disclosure showing Paul Pelosi purchased up to $5 million worth in stock of a computer chips company before a vote on legislation that would hand billions to semiconductor manufacturers.
He bought 20,000 shares of Nvidia, which is one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies that designs and manufactures graphics processors and other technologies, on June 17. Senators voted Tuesday to advance the bipartisan competition legislation allocating $52 billion for domestic semiconductor manufacturing and a final vote will reportedly occur this or next week.
Pelosi indicated she will support the legislation Wednesday, noting she is “optimistic” that her chamber will “take this bill up as early as next week.”
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the left-wing think tank Public Citizen, previously told the DCNF that Paul’s dealings raise the question if he “could have access to some insider legislative information.”
“This is the reason why there is a stock trading app that exclusively monitors Paul’s trading activity and then its followers do likewise,” said Holman.
Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
