A financial disclosure shows that Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, bought approximately $5 million in stock of a computer company ahead of a vote on a bill this week that would hand billions of dollars insubsidies to boost chip manufacturing.
On June 17, Paul Pelosi purchased 20,000 shares of Nvidia, one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, according to the Speaker’s disclosure report released on Thursday. As early as Tuesday, senators will convene to vote on a bipartisan competition bill, which allocates $52 billion to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and gives tax credits for productions, according to a Reuters report on Thursday.
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the left-wing think tank Public Citizen, told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), “It certainly raised the specter that Paul Pelosi 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.”
Nvidia is a multinational corporation that designs and manufactures graphics processors and other technology, and is heavily reliant on semiconductors. The House passed a bill in February that included $52 billion in domestic subsidies for the semiconductor industry, and chip companies, including Nvidia, demanded Congress in June move forward on finalizing semiconductors subsidies for domestic manufacturing.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday, “The conference is stuck. And so, it seems to me there acouple of ways out of this, potentially,” noting that the bill would have a better likelihood of passing without the $52 billion funding for semiconductor manufacturing.
Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC) told the DCNF the “optics” of Pelosi’s stock disclosure “are horrible.”
Norman continued, “Obviously Speaker Pelosi would be aware of the timing of this legislation over in the Senate. On the heels of that vote, for anyone in her orbit to purchase seven-figures worth of stock of an U.S.-based chip manufacturer just reeks of impropriety.”
Paul Pelosi also disclosed that he sold up to $250,000 worth of Apple stock and up to $5 million worth of Visa stock. The speaker’s husband is an avid stock trader and purchased more than $6 million worth of Nvidia call options in 2021, filings show.
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