On Thursday, Fox Business posted an article about the failure of a member of Congress to disclose some of his wife’s recent stock transactions.
The article reports:
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin violated a federal conflict-of-interest law by failing to properly disclose stock shares that his wife – President Biden’s nominee to be the Federal Reserve‘s top banking regulator – received for her work at a Colorado-based financial technology company, a source familiar with the matter told FOX Business.
Lawmakers’ spouses are allowed to trade in companies or industries that their partners may help regulate. But Jamie Raskin’s failure to promptly disclose the shares that his wife sold marks a violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. The law – frequently referred to as the STOCK Act – was passed in 2012 in an attempt to increase transparency on Capitol Hill; the law made it illegal for members of Congress and their families to profit from inside information and requires lawmakers to report stock trades to Congress within 45 days.
Jamie Raskin, a prominent lawmaker who led the second impeachment trial of former President Trump, did not immediately respond to a FOX Business request for comment. But the Democrat has acknowledged the late filing and told Business Insider that the omission occurred because the transaction happened just before their 25-year-old son, Thomas, died on Dec. 31, 2020.
The article notes:
The Maryland Democrat disclosed information about the transaction in August 2021 – eight months after Sarah Bloom Raskin sold 195,936 shares of Reserve Trust for $1.5 million, according to a federal financial disclosure. The document listed the initial transaction date as Dec. 18, 2020.
The article reports another aspect of this connection:
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., probed Sarah Bloom Raskin over her connections to Reserve Trust, noting that many other nonbank financial institutions have applied and failed to receive a Fed master account. (The company even touts its access on the front of its homepage: “Move beyond the bank. Reserve Trust is the first fintech trust company with a Federal Reserve master account.”)
Sarah Bloom Raskin served on the Fed’s board from 2010 to 2014 and was tapped by former President Obama to serve as assistant Treasury secretary. She joined the Reserve Trust board in May 2017, four months after she left the Treasury Department.
There seem to be a lot of amazing coincidences among the Biden administration’s nominees for government positions.