Rep. Bachus faces insider-trading investigation
WashPost
Thursday, February 9, 8:30 PM
The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee over possible violations of insider-trading laws, according to sources familiar with the case.
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.
The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the sources said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe that insider-trading violations have occurred.
The case is the first of its kind involving a member of Congress. It comes at a time of intense public scrutiny of congressional ethics, with the House passing legislation Thursday to tighten rules against insider trading by lawmakers. The impetus for the legislation, a version of which passed in the Senate a week earlier, came from a “60 Minutes” report and a book mentioning Bachus’s trades, “Throw Them All Out,” by Peter Schweizer.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
This will be very difficult to prove ... I suspect that many of the investments that Congressman Bachus made were in well-known companies that anyone who attended the Financial Services or Transportation Committee hearings could arrived at the same investment strategy. For example, Mr. Bachus would have heard about the credit downgrades at the Financial Services Committee meeting one year before the fallout happened ... most of us just did not pay attention to what was happening.
Mr. Bachus is the second Republican to have an ethics probe acknowledged this week.
Too bad the House rejected Tim Walz's STOCK Act.
Sad, but in a backroom session on Tuesday night, Majority Leader Cantor developed his bill with a few other Representatives and then offered it as amendment to the Senate approved bill on Wednesday ... they voted on approve Mr. Cantor's bill on Thursday. The big difference is that Mr. Cantor's bill protects the $100 million dollar "political intelligence industry" ... I have detailed this on the MN Political Roundtable.
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