United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is grabbing headlines for wrong reasons all over again. She is now well-positioned to make pecuniary gains out of President Biden’s $2 trillion spending bill. Actually, Biden reserved $174 billion for electric vehicles, charging stations and similar policies as subsidies in his spending bill launched last week. Now, you might ask how Nancy Pelosi comes into the picture. Well, here is how.
Financial disclosures state that in December, Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi invested between half a million and $1 million in Tesla. Now, Tesla is itself poised to be a big winner in Biden’s infrastructure plan, given the massive proposed subsidies for electric cars.
Technically, the spouses of Congressional lawmakers are allowed to invest in private firms that their lawmaker husbands or wives regulate. However, there is an absolute bar on non-lawmaker spouses acting on the basis of special information passed on by their Congressional consort.
In the present case, Nancy’s Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hammill told Fox News that the Speaker did not have any involvement in the investment purchases nor did she have any “prior knowledge” of them.
AP too reported that the House Speaker is going to play a key role in shaping the US clean energy policy, and Paul Pelosi’s investments mean that the House Speaker could stand to benefit financially from Tesla’s anticipated success.
Yet, Republicans are getting tough on Nancy Pelosi. Torunn Sinclair, National Republican Congressional Committee national press secretary, said, “There’s a reason Nancy Pelosi is one of the most disliked politicians in America—she’s corrupt.”
Sinclair added, “This is yet another example of Nancy Pelosi using her power to tax the middle class and personally profit from it.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell also vowed to fight the infrastructure plan “every step of the way.”
Nancy Pelosi actually does not have a very good reputation when it comes to such investments. In 2012, Republicans had even taken a dig at her while moving an ethics bill, giving more teeth to the law for preventing government officials from gaining special access to initial public stock offerings.
The Republicans had then described the bill as “Pelosi Provision”. The so-called “Pelosi Provision” was supposed to bring into the limelight a purchase of Visa Inc shares by Paul Pelosi in 2008, even as Congress was considering new credit card regulations.
Within two years of the purchase by Paul Pelosi, the shares had jumped by a healthy $20 each. And now some nine years later, Nancy Pelosi is facing criticism over similar allegations all over again, albeit at a much larger scale.
Nancy Pelosi is bound to face some serious scrutiny over the insider trading allegations being made against her. Till very recently, the Democrats and so-called progressives were actually lambasting Senator Dianne Feinstein over her alleged failure to disclose her husband’s stock purchase.
As a person in a publicly trusted position, how is it okay for this to be let go with just a fine? If you wonder why people don't trust or have faith in Congress, here is bright shiny example. https://t.co/31u6NvelK6
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) January 28, 2021
But now Democrats are themselves going to face some nasty questions about Paul Pelosi’s Tesla investments. It becomes all the more problematic for the Democrats since Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan itself is bound to get blemished by the controversy surrounding Nancy Pelosi.
