Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi at the White House
Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, are among the wealthiest congressional couples. Paul Pelosi trades tens of millions of dollars worth of stock and stock options each year, federal records indicate.Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
  • Speaker Nancy Pelosi reported three new stock and stock option trades made by her husband, Paul Pelosi, in June 2022.
  • Paul Pelosi's trades involve Apple, Visa, and NVIDIA.
  • Congress is debating debating whether lawmakers and their spouses should be able to trade stocks.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, exercised millions of dollars in NVIDIA call options and sold large quantities of Apple and Visa options and shares in late June, according to a new congressional financial disclosure.

Paul Pelosi exercised 200 call options, or 20,000 shares, of NVIDIA worth between $1 million and $5 million, according to the disclosure, which Nancy Pelosi filed Thursday with the House of Representatives.

Paul Pelosi also sold 10,000 shares of Visa worth between $1 million and $5 million and sold 50 call options in Apple valued between $100,000 and $250,000.

 

The speaker's husband's trades come at a time when Congress is debating whether its members and their spouses should even be allowed to buy, sell, and hold individual stocks at all.

Pelosi herself initially pushed back against the idea.

"We are a free-market economy," Speaker Pelosi said. "They should be able to participate in that."

Pelosi ultimately acquiesced after strong criticism from members of Congress and the general public. She allowed bipartisan groups of lawmakers to draft bills and hold a public hearing. 

"I've said to the House Administration Committee, review all the bills that are coming in and see which ones — where the support is in our caucus," Pelosi said. "If members want to do that, I'm okay with that."

Lawmakers are currently deliberating on several congressional stock-trade bills. No vote on any of the bills has yet been scheduled. 

Insider's "Conflicted Congress" project, in addition to work from other outlets, identified 65 members of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — who violated an insider trading and conflicts-of-interest law, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act.

While Pelosi herself does not trade stocks, her husband Paul Pelosi is a frequent investor. Insider collected each of Paul Pelosi's trades that the speaker reported in 2021 and 2022. Many of his trades appear to be worth millions — an Insider analysis from 2021 found that the speaker is ranked as the 14th wealthiest member of Congress with an estimated net worth of at least $46,123,051.

Read the original article on Business Insider