At the very least 97 current members of Congress bought or sold stock, bonds or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or a dependent child, an evaluation by The Recent York Times has found.
U.S. lawmakers usually are not banned from investing in any company, including those who may very well be affected by their decisions. However the trading patterns uncovered by the Times evaluation underscore longstanding concerns concerning the potential for conflicts of interest or use of inside information by members of Congress, government ethics experts say.
Times reporters analyzed transactions between 2019 and 2021 using a database of members’ financial filings called Capitol Trades created by 2iQ Research. They matched the trades against relevant committee assignments and the dates of hearings and congressional investigations.
When contacted, most of the lawmakers said the trades they reported had been carried out independently by a spouse or a broker with no input from them. Some have since sold all their stocks or moved them into blind trusts. Two said the trades were accidental.
Here’s all the pieces The Times’s evaluation turned up.
Got a confidential news tip?  The Recent York Times would love to listen to from readers who need to share messages and materials with our journalists. Learn more.
In regards to the evaluation
The Times began with data on financial transactions by members of Congress or their immediate members of the family between 2019 and 2021. The information was drawn from filings by the senators and representatives, which were digitized and connected to data on the businesses’ industries by Capitol Trades, a project of the Frankfurt-based financial data company 2iQ Research. The information was compiled by the corporate’s team of greater than 100 analysts, who reviewed each filing by hand, in line with Ahmed Asaad, head of research at Capitol Trades, and Diona Denkovska, 2iQ Research’s head of knowledge strategy.
Times reporters built a database of greater than 9,000 examples of how those corporations intersected with specific congressional committees and subcommittees. They identified committees that oversee areas of federal policy vital to the businesses’ business, and those who oversee or fund federal agencies that gave the businesses significant contracts. In addition they checked out investigations that committees have performed into specific corporations and the corporate leaders whom those committees called to testify in hearings.
They matched those potential conflicts with data on committee assignments, provided by the ProPublica Congress API, Congressional Quarterly and Charles Stewart III, a professor at M.I.T., to search out examples of trades that overlapped with the member’s committee tenure.
The Times didn’t include trades in municipal bonds, mutual funds or index funds, even those who track a particular sector. It also didn’t consider trades by members who hurried to divest from shares shortly after being appointed to a relevant committee or those whose transactions were all sales, so long as they were entirely divesting themselves of stocks inside a 60-day period.
The Times couldn’t account for each committee that affects each company; consequently, the evaluation is definitely an undercount.
At the very least 97 current members of Congress bought or sold stock, bonds or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or a dependent child, an evaluation by The Recent York Times has found.
U.S. lawmakers usually are not banned from investing in any company, including those who may very well be affected by their decisions. However the trading patterns uncovered by the Times evaluation underscore longstanding concerns concerning the potential for conflicts of interest or use of inside information by members of Congress, government ethics experts say.
Times reporters analyzed transactions between 2019 and 2021 using a database of members’ financial filings called Capitol Trades created by 2iQ Research. They matched the trades against relevant committee assignments and the dates of hearings and congressional investigations.
When contacted, most of the lawmakers said the trades they reported had been carried out independently by a spouse or a broker with no input from them. Some have since sold all their stocks or moved them into blind trusts. Two said the trades were accidental.
Here’s all the pieces The Times’s evaluation turned up.
Got a confidential news tip?  The Recent York Times would love to listen to from readers who need to share messages and materials with our journalists. Learn more.
In regards to the evaluation
The Times began with data on financial transactions by members of Congress or their immediate members of the family between 2019 and 2021. The information was drawn from filings by the senators and representatives, which were digitized and connected to data on the businesses’ industries by Capitol Trades, a project of the Frankfurt-based financial data company 2iQ Research. The information was compiled by the corporate’s team of greater than 100 analysts, who reviewed each filing by hand, in line with Ahmed Asaad, head of research at Capitol Trades, and Diona Denkovska, 2iQ Research’s head of knowledge strategy.
Times reporters built a database of greater than 9,000 examples of how those corporations intersected with specific congressional committees and subcommittees. They identified committees that oversee areas of federal policy vital to the businesses’ business, and those who oversee or fund federal agencies that gave the businesses significant contracts. In addition they checked out investigations that committees have performed into specific corporations and the corporate leaders whom those committees called to testify in hearings.
They matched those potential conflicts with data on committee assignments, provided by the ProPublica Congress API, Congressional Quarterly and Charles Stewart III, a professor at M.I.T., to search out examples of trades that overlapped with the member’s committee tenure.
The Times didn’t include trades in municipal bonds, mutual funds or index funds, even those who track a particular sector. It also didn’t consider trades by members who hurried to divest from shares shortly after being appointed to a relevant committee or those whose transactions were all sales, so long as they were entirely divesting themselves of stocks inside a 60-day period.
The Times couldn’t account for each committee that affects each company; consequently, the evaluation is definitely an undercount.
