Tag: Congress

Inventory Trades Reported by Almost a Fifth of Congress Present Potential Conflicts

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Post date September 14, 2022

Stock Trades Reported by Nearly a Fifth of Congress Show Possible Conflicts

Despite their influence and extensive access to information, members of Congress can buy and sell stocks with few restrictions.

A New York Times analysis found that 97 lawmakers or their family members bought or sold financial assets over a three-year span in industries that could be affected by their legislative committee work.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama and a member of the agriculture committee, regularly reported buying and selling contracts tied to cattle prices starting last year, even as the panel, by Mr. Tuberville’s own account, had “been talking about the cattle markets.”

Representative Bob Gibbs, an Ohio Republican on the House Oversight Committee, reported buying shares of the pharmaceutical company AbbVie in 2020 and 2021, while the committee was investigating AbbVie and five rivals over high drug prices.

The timing of one trade by the wife of Representative Alan Lowenthal, Democrat of California, was especially striking: His disclosure statement said she had sold Boeing shares on March 5, 2020 — one day before a House committee on which he sits released damaging findings on the company’s handling of its 737 Max jet, which was involved in two fatal crashes.

These lawmakers — all of whom defended the transactions as proper — are among 97 current senators or representatives who reported trades by themselves or immediate family members in stocks or other financial assets that intersected with the work of committees on which they serve, according to an extensive analysis of trades from the years 2019 to 2021 by The New York Times.

The potential for conflicts in stock trading by members of Congress — and their choice so far not to impose stricter limits on themselves — has long drawn criticism, especially when particularly blatant cases emerge. But the Times analysis demonstrates the scale of the issue: Over the three-year period, more than 3,700 trades reported by lawmakers from both parties posed potential conflicts between their public responsibilities and private finances.

A selection of stock trading disclosures by members of Congress, with potential conflicts identified by The Times highlighted in yellow.

In some cases, the transactions appear to be routine or to have only a tangential connection to any influence the lawmaker might have had on an issue. In others, the trades were conducted by trusts or brokers who, the lawmakers say, were operating without any instructions or input from them.

But many instances show how legislative work and investment decisions can overlap in ways that at a minimum can leave the appearance of a conflict and that sometimes form a troubling pattern — even if they technically fall within the rules.

Under a 2012 law known as the STOCK Act, members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks, bonds and other financial instruments as long as they do not trade on inside information and disclose any transactions by themselves or immediate family members valued at $1,000 or more within 45 days.

Like everyone else, members of Congress are subject to laws against insider trading. Even knowledge that would fall short of the legal definition of inside information, though, has the potential to create ethical dilemmas for members of Congress who, on any given day, might be able to glean insights through legislative work, classified briefings or meetings with constituents, donors, corporate executives, regulators and other government officials.

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Both the House and the Senate have been trying to develop legislation to tighten the rules, but whether a bill will be passed by both chambers and make it to President Biden’s desk this year remains in doubt, despite rare bipartisan support.

“The American people don’t want us day trading for profit, and engaging in active trading of the very equities that are connected to the policies that we are deciding on and voting on every day,” said Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican. He is co-sponsoring a bill in the House that would require members to put individual stocks, bonds and many other financial assets in a blind trust, a portfolio that is managed by an outside adviser with no involvement by the owner.

To examine the potential for conflicts, The Times used a comprehensive database called Capitol Trades, which was compiled from congressional trading disclosures by the German financial data firm 2iQ Research.

The Times then matched the trades against committee assignments, hearings and investigations to construct a picture of how members’ congressional work and their personal financial transactions could potentially intersect.

Some committees have broad purview over matters like tax policy, which affects every company and individual in the U.S. economy but which the Times analysis would not have flagged. And members of Congress have wide-ranging influence, and access to sensitive information, that their committee assignments may not reflect.

Yet even with those omissions, the 3,700 potentially conflicted trades identified by the analysis amounted to more than 10 percent of the transactions by members of Congress in the Capitol Trades database during the three years.

The analysis shows that 13 lawmakers, including Mr. Gibbs and other members of the House oversight panel, reported that they or immediate family members had bought or sold shares of companies that were under investigation by their committees between 2019 and 2021, encompassing years in which Democrats controlled the House and control of the Senate swung from Republicans to Democrats.

Bob Gibbs

Representative, R-Ohio

Reported trades in 36 companies;
16 potential conflicts

Oversight Committee

AbbVie*Johnson & JohnsonMerckPfizer

*
Traded while the committee was investigating the company

Oversight Subcommittee on Environment

Exxon MobilAmerican Electric PowerBPEmerson ElectricEnergy TransferEnergy Transfer PartnersMarathon OilMarathon Petroleum

Transportation Committee

BoeingQuantumScapeFordUnion Pacific Corp.

It also showed that 44 of the 50 members of Congress who were most active in the markets bought or sold securities in companies over which their committee assignments could give them some degree of knowledge or influence.

One of the most vexing issues for lawmakers is trading by their immediate family members, some of whom have independent wealth and careers.

The 97 members the Times analysis identified do not include Speaker Nancy Pelosi; her disclosure filings were not flagged because she does not sit on any legislative committees. Her husband, Paul Pelosi, is a real estate and technology investor who reported buying and selling between $25 million and $81 million worth of stocks, options and other financial assets between 2019 and 2021, according to Ms. Pelosi’s filings. Among them were investments in high-profile companies like Alphabet — the parent company of Google — that are regularly the subject of congressional and regulatory scrutiny.

The husband of Representative Carol Miller, Republican of West Virginia, bought shares in the pharmaceutical company AbbVie during the investigation into drug pricing by the House oversight panel while she was serving on the committee, according to Ms. Miller’s disclosure statement.

So did the wife and children of another member of that committee, Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, his filings show. Mr. Khanna’s family members bought or sold shares in not only AbbVie during the committee’s review, but also in those of seven other companies while they were under scrutiny by the oversight panel or other committees on which Mr. Khanna sat.

A page from a stock trading disclosure submitted by Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California.

Mr. Khanna, whose wife, Ritu Ahuja Khanna, is the daughter of Monte Ahuja, the founder of a successful automotive equipment company, reported that his wife and children — who are young and whose assets are traded by a trust — bought or sold securities at least 10,500 times in the three-year period The Times studied.

Mr. Khanna said in an interview that he never traded himself and was uninvolved in the trading of his family members’ assets. Mr. Khanna said he favored a complete ban on trading by members, but for family members, he said he thought a “highly diversified trust” that is managed by an outsider — the arrangement used by his wife and young children — was an ethical solution.

“If someone’s coming into a marriage with independent resources, I think that’s the appropriate way to deal with the conflict,” he said.

Ro Khanna

Representative, D-Calif.

Reported trades in 897 companies;
149 potential conflicts

Agriculture Committee

Deere & Co.Mondelez InternationalArcher Daniels MidlandIBMCortevaKelloggKraft HeinzConagra BrandsGeneral MillsFMC Corp.Hormel FoodsSyscoMcCormick & Co.Pilgrim’s PrideSmuckerTyson FoodsCampbell SoupHershey Co.Mosaic Co.US FoodsCF IndustriesLamb WestonPost HoldingsScotts Miracle-Gro

Agriculture Subcommittee on Commodity Exchanges, Energy and Credit

CME GroupIntercontinental Exchange

Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock and Foreign Agriculture

Idexx LaboratoriesMcDonald’s

Armed Services Committee

AmazonAlphabetBoeingGeneral ElectricOracleBWX TechnologiesHoneywellGeneral DynamicsNorthrop GrummanRaytheon TechnologiesL3Harris TechnologiesRaytheon Co.TeleflexTextronHexcel Corp.Huntington Ingalls IndustriesWoodwardHeico Corp.Howmet AerospaceSpirit AeroSystemsL3 TechnologiesOshkosh Corp.

Armed Services Committee
Oversight Committee

Lockheed Martin*TransDigm

*
Traded during investigation

Armed Services Committee
Oversight Committee
Agriculture Committee

Microsoft

Armed Services Committee
Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations

Leidos

Oversight Committee

MerckEli LillyWalgreens Boots AllianceAbbVie*Biogen*TwitterAmgen*Vertex PharmaceuticalsBristol Myers SquibbRegeneron PharmaceuticalsAlexion PharmaceuticalsGilead SciencesCapital OneViatrisIncyteAllerganModernaSeagenPerrigoBioMarin PharmaceuticalCelgene*Nektar TherapeuticsJazz PharmaceuticalsCatalentHorizon TherapeuticsAstraZenecaBluebird BioIonis PharmaceuticalsNeurocrine BiosciencesOrganonSage TherapeuticsUnited TherapeuticsAlnylam PharmaceuticalsBioNTechExelixisIntercept PharmaceuticalsNovartis*Ultragenyx

*
Traded during investigation

Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy

PfizerJohnson & Johnson*Intuitive SurgicalAltria Group*MedtronicPhilip Morris InternationalBecton, Dickinson and CompanyEdwards LifesciencesAbbott LaboratoriesBoston ScientificStrykerAbiomedBaxter InternationalZimmer BiometResMedHologicVarian Medical SystemsCantel MedicalDexcomInogen

*
Traded during investigation

Oversight Subcommittee on Environment

Exxon MobilChevron3M CompanyDominion EnergyEmerson ElectricAmetek Inc.GeneracDuPontPhillips 66Eaton Corp.Nextera EnergyRockwell AutomationSouthern Co.American Electric PowerBaker HughesCMS EnergyConocoPhillipsConsolidated EdisonCoterra EnergyDuke EnergyEOG ResourcesEversource EnergyExelonKinder MorganMarathon PetroleumPioneer Natural ResourcesPublic Service Enterprise GroupSchlumberger Ltd.Sempra EnergySensata TechnologiesValero EnergyWilliams CompaniesXcel EnergyBrookfield InfrastructureBrookfield Renewable Corp.Sunrun

Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations

VMware

Note: Stock purchases and sales were made by trusts in the names of Mr. Khanna’s wife and young children.

Whether legislators’ privileged position actually yields financial benefits to those who play the markets is not clear. Although some observers have pointed to specific examples of members who appeared to have made a profit, STOCK Act disclosures often provide insufficient information to make that calculation: They show only wide ranges of values, do not have to specify whether a transaction yielded a profit or a loss and sometimes do not show both a purchase and a sale.

But a Dartmouth College study published earlier this year said the specific stocks that members of Congress reported buying and selling between 2012 and 2020 did not, on average, subsequently perform any better or worse than other, similar stocks.

“You cannot rule out that there’s some serious insider trading going on,” said Bruce I. Sacerdote, an economics professor who was a co-author of the study. “What you know for sure is on average they don’t do particularly well, and these House members and senators would be better served if they were just in index funds.”

A Troubling Recent History

Legal and ethical questions about securities trading by members of Congress have surfaced repeatedly in recent years.

In 2020, Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, was investigated along with three other senators by the Justice Department for selling stocks after a private briefing on the potential harms of the coronavirus. The “well-timed stock sales” allowed Mr. Burr to avert at least $87,000 in losses, according to a recently unsealed affidavit used by the federal government to obtain a search warrant for the senator’s phone in 2020. But charges were never filed and the investigation was eventually closed, as were the investigations into his colleagues. The status of a separate Securities and Exchange Commission review into Mr. Burr is unclear.

A running investigation by the website Insider that began last year reported that 72 members of Congress had fallen out of compliance with the STOCK Act by making trading disclosures late, inaccurately or not at all.

In a rare insider-trading prosecution of a member of Congress, Representative Chris Collins, Republican of New York, resigned in 2019 after pleading guilty to charges related to giving his son insider information about a failed drug trial at an Australian biotech company on whose board the lawmaker served. He served time in prison before being pardoned by President Donald J. Trump.

A Morning Consult poll in January showed that almost two-thirds of respondents would like to see a ban on members of Congress trading.

In the absence of restrictions, Mr. Pelosi’s transactions alone have spawned a cottage industry of social media accounts and trade-tracking services to help investors emulate his market moves — often accompanied by scathing commentary about his wife’s potential conflicts of interest.

“The speaker does not own any stocks,” a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi said, adding that she “has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”

Those critiques are fueled by the fact that as speaker, Ms. Pelosi has immense power over which legislation makes it to the House floor — including various proposals now being considered to tighten the rules for financial trading by her husband, her colleagues and their families.

After initially opposing stricter measures, Ms. Pelosi said in February she would support them but wanted federal judges to be held to similar rules. The Wall Street Journal reported last fall that more than 130 federal judges had overseen cases involving companies in which they or their families owned interests.

A bill passed by Congress this year evened out disclosure requirements between the two branches of government. It was signed into law by Mr. Biden in May.

A legislative proposal now under development by the House’s Democratic leadership, which was outlined in a memo reviewed by The Times, would prohibit lawmakers, their spouses and dependent children from trading stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies and other financial assets tied to specific companies. Under that proposal — which is separate from the bill that Mr. Roy, the Texas Republican, is supporting — members and their immediate families would be obliged to either sell off those holdings or place them in a blind trust.

Ms. Pelosi supports the proposed framework, according to a senior House official.

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has voiced support for new measures to curb trading by members, but no bill that could receive the necessary 60 votes for passage has yet emerged.

The House member designated by Ms. Pelosi to generate a compromise bill to address the issue — Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California — was herself among the 97 members identified by The Times’s analysis.

Zoe Lofgren

Representative, D-Calif.

Reported trades in 127 companies;
9 potential conflicts

Judiciary Committee

PfizerGilead Sciences*MerckAbbVie*Johnson & JohnsonWalgreens Boots Alliance*

*
Bond trades

Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet

Qualcomm

Science, Space and Technology Committee

Applied MaterialsIntel

Note: Stock purchases and sales were made in accounts owned by Ms. Lofgren’s husband.

Ms. Lofgren ranked 25th among members of Congress for the number of transactions disclosed, as a result of trades made by her husband. Among those were stocks or bonds issued by five drug manufacturers between 2019 and 2021, a period when the House Judiciary Committee, of which Ms. Lofgren has long been a member, introduced multiple bills to lower the cost of prescription drugs and root out what it called anticompetitive practices in the pharmaceutical industry. (Most of the bills never received a vote, although aspects of one proposal were wrapped into a broader spending bill late in 2019.)

Ms. Lofgren said during an April hearing on how to curb congressional stock trading that her husband’s stocks were managed by “some guy at the bank” without the couple’s knowledge. Her office declined to comment on the specifics of the pharmaceutical sales.

“I have never personally purchased or sold any stock,” Ms. Lofgren said in a statement. She added that she and her husband had instructed their broker to avoid fossil fuels, tobacco and gambling companies.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, has been tasked by the House’s Democratic leadership with generating a compromise bill to address stock trading by members of Congress. Her husband reported trades that intersected with her congressional work.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Six members of Congress said that subsequent to making transactions that were flagged by the Times analysis, they or their family members sold all their individual stock investments and stopped buying new ones. Another five members said that they are placing or have placed assets in a blind trust.

One lawmaker, Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, said her son had begun buying and selling a range of stocks without her knowledge while he was at college — much to her chagrin.

A few members said there was nothing wrong with their investing in individual companies.

“I’ve had bank stocks and I’ve been strongly against the banks, and they’ve never supported me, and I’ve got drug stocks and I’ve never supported Big Pharma, and they’ve not supported me, and it’s just irrelevant to me,” said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, who added that he had bought some of the stocks decades ago and believed he had not purchased a new share in at least 10 years.

Mr. Cohen said he had deliberately sold Boeing shares only after its price had fallen while it was under investigation for the 737 Max crashes by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, of which he is a member, to avoid potential criticism.

In some other professions, the rules are much stricter. Corporate law practices, private equity firms, news organizations and hedge funds restrict the trading of securities that could be affected by knowledge gleaned on the job — even in cases where the employer’s interactions with those companies are far removed from the employee who wants to trade. (The Times does not allow employees to hold stock or any other financial interest in a company or enterprise whose coverage the employee regularly provides or oversees.)

Trading prohibitions are even more stringent in the White House, where officials and staff members must sell off individual stock holdings, recuse themselves from matters that could affect their financial interests or, in rare cases, seek a presidential waiver.

“Every single day we have access to information that people share with us because we’re members of Congress,” said Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, whose bill to tighten trading restrictions has attracted 67 co-sponsors from both parties, including Mr. Roy. That information, she said, “can drive markets.”

“And so the whole purpose of this legislation is to say, we have the ability, through this one extra step, to tell the American people that we are trustworthy,” Ms. Spanberger added.

Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, is spearheading a bill to tighten trading restrictions for members of Congress.

Greg Kahn for The New York Times

Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, is one of 67 co-sponsors of the bill.

Greg Kahn for The New York Times

Widespread Conflicts

During the three-year period analyzed by The Times, about a third of members of Congress — when all seats are filled there are 535 voting members — bought or sold stocks or other financial assets.

The 97 members who were flagged by the Times analysis amounted to more than half of the people who reported trades, and nearly a fifth of Congress. The group was split almost equally between Democrats and Republicans.

Some committees had multiple members with potential conflicts.

Three members of the House Committee on Financial Services bought or sold Wells Fargo shares during a year in which the committee was investigating the bank’s consumer practices and risk management.

One of them, Representative John W. Rose, Republican of Tennessee, sold between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of the stock late in 2019, a few months before the committee issued a sharply critical report on the company that coincided with a steep decline in the bank’s share price amid pandemic fears. A spokesman for Mr. Rose did not respond to requests for comment.

John W. Rose

Representative, R-Tenn.

Reported trades in 7 companies;
3 potential conflicts

Financial Services Committee

Bank of AmericaPinnacle Financial PartnersWells Fargo

A quarter of the members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources reported purchases or sales of securities in energy companies like Exxon and Chevron.

More than a third of the members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported either buying or selling stocks like the oil-field services company Schlumberger, the chemical company DuPont or the manufacturer Illinois Tool Works.

In the House, eight members of the Armed Services Committee reported transactions in defense or aerospace stocks.

Some members reported trades in particular companies over and over.

Dr. Deborah Malumed, the wife of Mr. Lowenthal, the California Democrat, bought or sold Sunrun — which installs solar energy systems in homes — on 97 occasions during a yearlong period, according to his disclosure statements. During that time, Sunrun shares experienced two rallies — one that began late in 2019 and extended into early 2020, and a second, much bigger one after a marketwide rout caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States in March.

Alan Lowenthal

Representative, D-Calif.

Reported trades in 109 companies;
9 potential conflicts

Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

SunrunVivint SolarSempra EnergyVistraNextera EnergyBrookfield Infrastructure

Transportation Committee

UberBoeingGeneral Motors

Note: The vast majority of stock purchases and sales were made from accounts owned by Mr. Lowenthal’s wife.

In 2020, Mr. Lowenthal, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and the chairman of an energy-related subcommittee, was part of a bipartisan group that pushed for the inclusion of renewable energy companies in pandemic relief measures. (Many of the proposals eventually passed last month as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.) In June 2020, he co-sponsored a bill to provide tax incentives for using renewable energy. It never received a vote.

Sunrun shares began rallying around that time; by October they had reached what at the time was a company high of $80. They cost $9 when Dr. Malumed bought shares earlier that year, in March — the month she sold Boeing shares ahead of the Transportation Committee’s preliminary report on the 737 Max jet crashes.

Mr. Lowenthal said in an emailed statement that the “overwhelming majority” of his trades and those of his wife — including the Sunrun and Boeing trades — were made by their stockbroker and without his involvement.

“I have never discussed any congressional matter, including the Boeing 737 Max investigation, with our broker and would never do so,” he said.

Other members traded more broadly within sectors affected by their committees. Mr. Tuberville, a longtime college football coach who joined the Senate in early 2021, quickly established himself as an active trader with recurring potential conflicts.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, at right, reported trades in 20 companies or agricultural commodities that posed potential conflicts, according to the Times analysis.

Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

As a member of the Senate health committee, he bought and sold shares of major pharmaceutical and medical services companies.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, on two occasions he and his wife bought, and then in a third transaction sold, options called puts — which represent the right to sell shares at a specified future price — tied to Microsoft in a five-month period. The second put sale occurred less than two weeks before the software company lost a $10 billion contract with the Defense Department. And as a member of the agriculture committee and its subcommittee on commodities, risk management and trade, Mr. Tuberville bet on the future prices of farm products.

Toward the end of 2021, Mr. Tuberville made a flurry of contract purchases tied to future prices of corn and cattle. He continued buying and selling corn and cattle contracts this year, even as the agriculture committee discussed two bills that could affect cattle prices if passed.

Tommy Tuberville

Senator, R-Ala.

Reported trades in 101 companies or commodities;
20 potential conflicts

Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee

Cattle futuresCorn futuresRed wheat futuresHershey Co.

Armed Services Committee

AlphabetGeneral DynamicsGeneral ElectricHoneywell

Armed Services Committee
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

Microsoft

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

ChemedJohnson & JohnsonQuest DiagnosticsAlign TechnologyBecton, Dickinson and CompanyBristol Myers SquibbEdwards LifesciencesMerckRegeneron PharmaceuticalsResMedVeeva Systems

In a brief interview at the Capitol recently, Mr. Tuberville said, “I don’t trade stocks, my brokers do.” He said that he did not receive nonpublic information on the agriculture committee and would never share committee information with his brokers in any case.

“I don’t limit them to anything, what they can do, what they can’t do,” he said. “I give them money, say to them: ‘I’m in public service now; you do it. Don’t lose it all!’”

In recent years, some lawmakers or their families have bought or sold stocks that were likely to be affected by events they had been briefed on confidentially.

Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, fell under scrutiny by the Office of Congressional Ethics over a stock trade.

In 2020, Mr. Kelly’s wife, Victoria Kelly, bought $15,000 to $50,000 of stock in the mining company Cleveland-Cliffs — just one day after Mr. Kelly’s office learned that the Commerce Department would initiate a tariff investigation that might benefit the company, which at the time employed about 1,400 workers at a steel plant in Butler, within his congressional district. Mr. Kelly had lobbied Trump administration officials for additional tariff protections, according to an ethics office report.

Ms. Kelly’s purchase — made before the news was public — was the only trade she made in an individual stock that year; records suggest she took a nearly 300 percent profit when she sold eight months later.

The ethics office’s investigation was disclosed last year. While Ms. Kelly’s Cleveland-Cliffs purchase was not flagged by the Times analysis because it did not overlap in an obvious way with her husband’s committee assignments, 23 other transactions made by her in 2019 were purchases and sales of a variety of pharmaceutical, insurance and medical equipment stocks while Mr. Kelly was a member of the health care subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. and Ms. Kelly did not respond to requests for comment, and it is unclear whether the House Committee on Ethics — to which the Office of Congressional Ethics, a separate and independent body, referred the matter last July — is still investigating.

But even ethics committee members in both chambers, who are responsible for ensuring compliance with the STOCK Act disclosure requirements, have potential stock-trading conflicts.

Representative Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota and a member of the House Ethics Committee as well as the Financial Services Committee, traded more than 150 times in tech companies, banks and other financial institutions.

Dean Phillips

Representative, D-Minn.

Reported trades in 276 companies;
34 potential conflicts

Financial Services Committee

Charles SchwabWells FargoBank of New York MellonNorthern TrustGoldman SachsJPMorgan ChaseTruist FinancialE-TradeMetaBank of AmericaCitigroupCitizens FinancialFifth Third BancorpFranklin ResourcesHuntington BancsharesPNC Financial ServicesState StreetComericaFirst Citizens BancsharesInvescoMorgan StanleyAffiliated Managers GroupM&T Bank Corp.PayPalU.S. BancorpCIT Group*CME GroupKeyCorpPeople’s United FinancialRegions Financial Corp.*SVB FinancialSynovus*Wintrust FinancialZions Bancorporation

*
Bond trade

A spokesman for Mr. Phillips said that he “did not direct the sale or purchase of any stocks after being elected” in 2018 “to avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest with his official duties in Congress.” Some of the transactions occurred after January 2020, when the representative said Mr. Phillips began moving most of his stocks into a blind trust, a process that took 18 months.

Representative John Rutherford, Republican of Florida, traded aerospace and defense companies during his time on the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

John Rutherford

Representative, R-Fla.

Reported trades in 60 companies;
3 potential conflicts

Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security

BAE SystemsMicrosoftLockheed Martin

Mr. Rutherford appeared to be late in reporting more than 150 trades, according to an analysis by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which valued the trades involved at between $652,000 and $3.5 million.

In February, the matter was referred to the House Ethics Committee, of which he is a member.

In August, the committee said it had dismissed the matter.

Kate Kelly covers money, influence, and policy as a correspondent in the Washington bureau of The Times. Before that, she spent 20 years covering Wall Street deals, key players and their intersection with politics. She is the author of three books, including “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.” @katekelly

Adam Playford is projects editor for The Upshot, where he works on investigative data projects. He previously worked as an investigative editor at the Tampa Bay Times and a reporter at Newsday and the Palm Beach Post. @adamplayford

Alicia Parlapiano is a graphics editor and reporter covering politics and policy from Washington. She joined The Times in 2011 and previously worked at The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center. @aliciaparlap

Ege Uz is a creative technologist and the 2022 Digital News Design Fellow at The Times.

About the analysis

The Times started with data on financial transactions by members of Congress or their immediate family members between 2019 and 2021. The data was drawn from filings by the senators and representatives, which were digitized and connected to data on the companies’ industries by Capitol Trades, a project of the Frankfurt-based financial data company 2iQ Research. The data was compiled by the company’s team of more than 100 analysts, who reviewed each filing by hand, according to Ahmed Asaad, head of research at Capitol Trades, and Diona Denkovska, 2iQ Research’s head of data strategy.

Times reporters built a database of more than 9,000 examples of how those companies intersected with specific congressional committees and subcommittees. They identified committees that oversee areas of federal policy vital to the companies’ business, and those that oversee or fund federal agencies that gave the companies significant contracts. They also looked at investigations that committees have performed into specific corporations and the company 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 find examples of trades that overlapped with the member’s committee tenure.

The Times did not include trades in municipal bonds, mutual funds or index funds, even those that track a specific sector. It also did not consider trades by members who moved quickly to divest from shares shortly after being appointed to a relevant committee or those whose transactions were all sales, as long as they were entirely divesting themselves of stocks within a 60-day period.

The Times could not account for every committee that affects each company; as a result, the analysis is surely an undercount.

Tags conflicts, Congress, Reported, Show, Stock, trades

Politics

Biden urges Congress to cross financial payments

Post author By
Post date September 4, 2021

President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to pass his more than $4 trillion economic agenda in order to boost sluggish job growth.

The president made his case for spending on infrastructure, climate policy and the social safety net after the Labor Department said the country added 235,000 jobs in August. The figure fell well short of the 720,000 jobs economists had expected.

Biden pinned the poor report on the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus and the reluctance of many eligible Americans to get a Covid-19 vaccine. He said the U.S. could boost its economy by reining in the virus and passing his two economic plans, which he said would help the middle class and make the country more resilient to the kind of extreme weather that knocked out power in New Orleans and crippled transit in New York City in recent days.

“Our country needs these investments,” Biden said. “I’m not asking for anything other than some fairness being injected into the system.”

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Biden stressed he does not see the investments as a “short-term stimulus” while the country emerges from the pandemic’s shadow. He said the proposals are designed to create “long-term prosperity.”

The president’s push for his economic agenda comes a day after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., complicated his party’s plans to pass it in Congress. Manchin, whose vote Democrats will need to approve an up to $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill in the Senate, urged congressional leaders to “pause” consideration of the measure.

The senator, who helped to negotiate the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, cited inflation and long-term debt as reasons for a delay. He did not rule out voting for a proposal that costs less than $3.5 trillion.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said she will not hold a vote on the infrastructure legislation until the Senate passes the Democrats’ spending plan. After centrists in her caucus threatened to hold up the budget bill, Pelosi made a nonbinding commitment to consider the bipartisan bill by Sept. 27.

In a Thursday Twitter post after Manchin announced his stance, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the fates of the two economic plans are tied.

“No infrastructure bill without the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill,” the Senate Budget Committee chairman said.

Pelosi and the White House hope to fully offset the spending through tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, among other measures. Democrats could also consider taxes on companies with runaway CEO pay and businesses that repurchase a substantial amount of stock, according to a discussion list circulated among Democratic lawmakers and obtained by CNBC.

Republicans have cited proposed tax hikes, and the overall $3.5 trillion price tag, in opposing the package.

Biden on Friday framed tax increases on the wealthy and corporations as a way to create a fairer economy. He repeated his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000.

“To those big corporations that don’t want things to change, my message is this: It’s time for working families, the folks who built this country, to have their taxes cut,” Biden said.

“And those corporate interests doing everything they can to find allies in Congress to keep that from happening, let me be, as the old expression goes, perfectly clear: I’m going to take them on.”

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Tags Biden, Bills, Congress, Economic, pass, Urges

Politics

The SEC wants extra energy from Congress to completely regulate crypto, Chair Gensler says

Post author By
Post date August 4, 2021

Gary Gensler

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said Tuesday that Wall Street’s top regulator needs Congress to grant it additional powers for overseeing a vast and ever-evolving cryptocurrency market.

Speaking about crypto at the Aspen Security Forum, Gensler said the SEC has “taken and will continue to take our authorities as far as they go.”

“Certain rules related to crypto assets are well settled. The test to determine whether a crypto asset is a security is clear,” he said. “There are some gaps in this space, though: We need additional congressional authorities to prevent transactions, products and platforms from falling between regulatory cracks. We also need more resources to protect investors in this growing and volatile sector.”

Gensler, who previously taught classes about blockchain and other financial technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has asked lawmakers to grant his agency the legal authority to oversee crypto exchanges.

He said many of the crypto coins were trading like assets and should fall under the purview of the SEC, which already has significant authority over digital assets.

Despite his deep knowledge of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, Gensler has made it clear that he intends to take a hands-on approach when it comes to new financial technologies. Capitol Hill has for months held hearings on how best to monitor the nascent market, now worth trillions, amid violent price swings and rapid growth.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, last week wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to urge her to bulk up oversight efforts.

Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee and a longtime critic of the nation’s largest banks, pressed the Treasury secretary to use her powers on the Financial Stability Oversight Council to bring about a safer crypto market.

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“FSOC must act quickly to use its statutory authority to address cryptocurrencies’ risks and regulate the market to ensure the safety and stability of consumers and our financial system,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote in a letter to Yellen. “As the demand for cryptocurrencies continues to grow and these assets become more embedded in our financial system, consumers, the environment, and our financial system are under growing threats,” she added.

Chief among regulators’ concerns about crypto are its susceptibly to fraud and market manipulation.

The Federal Trade Commission reported earlier this year that consumers reported losing more than $80 million to crypto scams between October and March, with many of those losses stemming from underhanded scammers targeting small investors on social media, the FTC said.

“The American public is buying, selling, and lending crypto on these trading, lending, and DeFi [decentralized finance] platforms, and there are significant gaps in investor protection,” Gensler said. “Make no mistake: To the extent that there are securities on these trading platforms, under our laws they have to register with the commission unless they meet an exemption. Make no mistake: If a lending platform is offering securities, it also falls into SEC jurisdiction.”

Gensler on Tuesday did not offer comment on the potential for approving a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, a pending decision that many in the crypto market are anxiously awaiting.

Investors are closely following the status of an application by VanEck to list shares of its Bitcoin Trust on the Chicago Board of Exchange’s BTZ Exchange. Regulators said in a letter dated June 16 that they would take additional time to seek comments from the public.

Bitcoin was last seen trading at $38,200, but has been volatile in recent months and in late July dipped below $30,000.

Republican SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, known for advocating somewhat easier regulation of digital assets, told CNBC last month that she’s frustrated with how slow the regulator has been to approve such an ETF.

Denying bitcoin ETF applications not only runs the risk of a double standard but also may leave thousands of investors with few, more-dangerous alternatives, Peirce said.

“The complications of not approving [an application] become stronger, because people are looking for other ways to do the same kinds of things that they would do with an exchange-traded product,” she said. “They’re looking at other types of products that aren’t as easy to get in and out of, they’re looking at companies, perhaps, that are somehow connected with bitcoin or crypto more broadly.”

Tags Chair, Congress, crypto, fully, Gensler, Power, regulate, SEC

Politics

Trump Asks Choose to Block Tax Return Launch to Congress

Post author By
Post date August 4, 2021

Attorneys for President Donald J. Trump argued in a new court document on Wednesday that a House committee request to receive Mr. Trump’s tax returns for six years should be blocked, portraying the effort as politically motivated and illegitimate.

In a 37-page file, Mr Trump’s Legal Department picked up arguments put forward by the Trump-era Justice Department to block the Congressional request, but the Biden-era Justice Department abandoned it last week when it was told by the Treasury Department said the ministry was required by law to make the documents available to the legislature.

Mr. Trump’s Legal Department wrote that the former President’s tax filings are “unlawful and unenforceable because they have no legitimate legislative purpose, violate legal authority, violate the First Amendment, breach due process, and / or violate the separation of powers. ”

The lawsuit, which dates back to when Mr. Trump was still President, is formally a case between the House Ways and Means Committee and the Treasury Department. However, since the executive branch has now dropped its resistance to the fulfillment of the demand, the Trump legal profession, as an intervener, is calling for an injunction that blocks this step.

Submission was awaited; One of Mr Trump’s lawyers said Monday that he would fight against the clearance of his return to Congress.

The filing argues that even though Mr Trump is no longer the incumbent president, the case still needs to be assessed as if he were in office since it dates from that time. Many of the Democrats’ filings come from the 2016 campaign when Trump broke the norm for presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns. Democrats have repeatedly suggested that he must hide something politically harmful.

During the Trump administration, the Justice Department cited such statements to argue that the stated purpose of the committee’s motion – for Congress to weigh legislative reforms regarding the disclosure of the president’s tax return – was an excuse for a genuinely illegitimate purpose.

However, last week the Office of the Justice Department Legal Adviser, now appointed by Dawn Johnsen, one of Biden’s appointments, said the executive branch must accept the stated purpose of the committee as to why it is requesting the returns and that the law allows it to Them.

“Even if some individual congressmen hope that information from the former president’s tax returns will only be released publicly for ‘debunking’,” she wrote, “it would not defeat the legitimate aims of obtaining the information in question.”

But Mr. Trump’s Legal Department is asking the judge overseeing the lawsuit, Trevor N. McFadden, of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, to rule otherwise. Mr. Trump appointed Mr. McFadden in 2017.

The ongoing litigation means Congress will not receive Mr. Trump’s tax returns anytime soon; Mr. Trump’s committee or legal team can appeal negative decisions to the Supreme Court. Even if Congress finally got them, that wouldn’t mean they would go public immediately or at all.

Tags Asks, block, Congress, Judge, release, return, tax, Trump

Politics

Decide provides Trump time to problem tax return disclosure to Congress

Post author By
Post date August 1, 2021

President Donald Trump arrives for a photocall with sheriffs from across the country on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington.

Erin Scott | Reuters

WASHINGTON – A federal judge is giving former President Donald Trump time to challenge a Justice Department order that the IRS must file its income tax returns to Congress.

U.S. District Court Justice for the District of Columbia, Trevor McFadden, said Trump and his attorneys had until Wednesday to respond.

Neither Trump nor his lawyers have said whether they will challenge Friday’s order.

On Friday, the Justice Department announced that the former president’s tax returns must be passed by the IRS to Congress, a reversal of his position during the Trump administration.

The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a 39-page statement that the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee had made a legitimate legislative motion to see Trump’s tax returns, with the stated aim of assessing how the IRS did the President of Tax Refunds.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Friday’s ruling came more than a year after the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tax returns had to be turned over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. by his longtime accountants on a criminal investigation subpoena.

In July, the Trump organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were indicted by Vance on crimes related to a “comprehensive and bold” plan since 2005 to avoid paying compensation taxes.

Trump, who broke decades of precedent set by candidates and former presidents by refusing to publish his income tax returns, repeatedly said his filings would be scrutinized by the IRS.

However, taxpayers are allowed to publicly publish their tax returns during the audit.

Tags Challenge, Congress, disclosure, Judge, return, tax, time, Trump

Politics

Trump tax returns have to be launched by IRS to Congress, DOJ says

Post author By
Post date July 30, 2021

US President Donald Trump leaves Air Force One upon arrival at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas on September 20, 2018. – Trump travels to Las Vegas for a campaign rally.

Almond Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump’s income tax returns must be submitted to Congress by the IRS, the Justice Department said on Friday.

The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel said the Democrat-led House Ways and Means Committee had filed a request with a legitimate legislative purpose to inspect Trump’s tax returns, with the stated aim of assessing how the IRS judges the presidents’ tax returns checks.

This 39-page statement is a reverse of a statement by the same bureau during the Trump administration that supported the IRS’s refusal to submit Trump’s Returns to the Committee.

Under federal law, the tax-related committees of Congress have a “broad right” to obtain taxpayer information from the Treasury Department, the parent company of the IRS, the new statement said.

“The statute at issue here is clear: ‘Upon written request’ from the chairman of one of the three tax committees of Congress, the secretary ‘sends’ the tax information requested to the committee,'” said Friday’s statement.

While these committees cannot force government executives to compel disclosure of this information, the opinion states that the committees should be denied tax returns “only in exceptional circumstances” and when the request “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose”.

The ruling comes more than a year after the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s tax returns and other financial records had to be turned over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. by his longtime accountants following a criminal investigation subpoena.

The Trump Organization and its longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg were charged by Vance on July 1 with crimes related to an alleged plan since 2005 to avoid paying taxes on the remuneration of the CFO and other top executives.

Trump broke decades of precedents as a presidential candidate and White House resident by refusing to voluntarily release his income tax returns.

He had claimed that his returns were being examined by the IRS to justify not disclosing the returns.

However, there is no ban on taxpayers from making their tax returns publicly available, even if those tax returns are audited.

The Justice Department opinion, coming under an Attorney General Merrick Garland selected by President Joe Biden, is likely to anger Trump.

A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement, “As I have maintained for years, the committee’s case is very strong and the law is on our side.”

“I’m glad the Justice Department approves and we can move forward,” said Neal.

Neal’s committee sued the Treasury Department and the IRS in July 2019 for obtaining Trump’s tax returns after then Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the head of the tax office defied subpoenas demanding Trump’s persona and business returns for six years. Mnuchin argued at the time that the committee had no legitimate legislative purpose in finding the documents.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said in a statement: “Today the Biden administration won a rule of law victory as it respected the public interest by responding to Chairman Neal’s request for Donald’s tax returns Trump follows. “

“As speaker, on behalf of the House of Representatives, I applaud Chairman Neal for his dignified pursuit of the truth and the Justice Department of the Biden Administration for its respect for the law,” said Pelosi.

“Access to former President Trump’s tax returns is a national security issue,” she said. “The American people deserve to know the facts of their troubling conflicts of interest and the undermining of our security and democracy as President.”

Tags Congress, DOJ, IRS, Released, Returns, tax, Trump

Politics

Congress Rushes to Assist Afghans Searching for Visas for Serving to U.S.

Post author By
Post date June 19, 2021

WASHINGTON – As President Biden’s September deadline for ending the long war in Afghanistan draws nearer, a bipartisan coalition in Congress is stepping up efforts to ensure that Afghans who retaliate there for cooperation with American troops and personnel go to the United States can immigrate.

The group of Republicans and Democrats, many of them military or veterans who have worked with translators, drivers and fixers in Afghanistan and other combat areas, are trying to legislate to aid the “Afghan allies,” as they are often called before American forces go home, leaving these allies unprotected against Taliban revenge attacks. Legislators want to make it easier for Afghans to qualify for a special visa, expedite the process and get them out of Afghanistan as soon as possible while they wait to be allowed to live legally in the US.

More than 18,000 Afghans who worked as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards and embassy workers for the United States during the war are stuck in a bureaucratic swamp after applying for a special immigrant visa – available to people who work for the government because of their work United States – some wait up to six or seven years for their applications to be processed.

The number of backward cases does not take into account family members, an additional 53,000 people, or the expected increase in requests for the withdrawal of American troops.

“We are frustrated here as lawmakers, especially those of us who have served and want to help the people who have helped us,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican and Army Reserve colonel who served with Iraqi Collaborated with translators in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 as a combat surgeon.

Over the past few weeks, Mr Wenstrup said he had thought of the Iraqis he had served with – people who liked to sell art and pirated copies at the army base – including two killed in surprise attacks near Abu Ghraib and one third who finally got his visa and is now a US citizen and a successful cardiologist in Ohio.

“They will be your brothers and sisters,” he said.

Mr. Wenstrup is part of the Working Group Honoring Our Promises – comprised of 10 Democrats and six Republicans – that spearheaded laws introduced Thursday that would expedite special immigrant visas from Afghanistan, increasing the number available from 11,000 to 19,000. The group is also lobbying the Biden government in an unlikely attempt to initiate a mass evacuation of Afghan applicants, possibly to Guam U.S. territory, while visas can be processed.

The bill would expand the universe of eligible Afghans by removing what its proponents call “onerous” application requirements, including a “credible affidavit” of a particular threat and evidence of a “sensitive and trustworthy” job. Instead, the measure would de facto provide that any Afghan who has helped the US government will, by definition, face retaliation and apply for a visa.

“It became very clear to us that we had very little time left to help the people of Afghanistan,” said Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado, law sponsor and former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan Has. “I have very big concerns.”

While Mr Biden set September as the exit date, military officials have since indicated that the schedule has accelerated, with American forces and NATO allies planning to leave by mid-July.

Rep. Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida and former Green Beret who still serves as a colonel in the Army National Guard, said Mr. Biden was short of time to look into the situation.

“If he doesn’t act and doesn’t get these people out, blood will stick to his hands and the hands of his administration,” said Mr Waltz.

The nonprofit No One Left Behind has tracked the murder of more than 300 translators or their family members since 2014, many of whom died while waiting for their visas to be processed, according to James Miervaldis, chairman of the group and sergeant of the Army Reserve.

A death database maintained by the group serves as a catalog of horrors: an interpreter was killed in a suicide attack in front of a bank; another was captured and tortured along the Kandahar-Kabul highway; another was killed in a night attack on his home.

In a poll by the organization, more than 90 percent of the 464 Afghan allies surveyed said they had received at least one death threat because of their work with Americans.

‘They are all generally scared,’ said Mr Miervaldis.

He found that the average time an Afghan applicant waited for a special immigrant visa to be processed was 3.5 years.

“We have people who wait six years, people who wait seven years,” he said. “There is literally no opposition in Congress and it’s frustrating how slow progress is coming.”

A mass evacuation would be a logistical challenge, similar to moving a small town. To date, the Biden government has resisted such calls and the prospect seems very unlikely. In a recent interview on CNN, Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken called evacuation “the wrong word” and instead advocated improving the functioning of the visa program.

He said the Biden government recently hired 50 people to expedite the process.

“We are determined to fulfill our obligation to those who have helped us, who put their lives at risk,” said Blinken. “We have invested significant resources to ensure that the program can work quickly and effectively.”

But the pressure to do more is growing. Last week the New York Times published interviews with Afghan interpreters who said they feared for their lives while they waited for their applications to be processed.

“If the Taliban take power, they will find and kill me easily,” said one man, Waheedullah Rahmani, 27, who has been waiting for a visa decision since 2015. “Then my wife will not have a husband and my daughter will not have a father.”

The special immigrant visa has been plagued by chronic delays and congestion to varying degrees for more than a decade. Mr Crow said the problem was exacerbated by former President Donald J. Trump, who starved the program of resources and personnel, and then by the coronavirus pandemic, which suspended personal interviews and reviews.

In a January report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “limited staffing” and “local security conditions directly related to the Covid-19 pandemic” were cited as “serious” implications for the visa application process.

Mr. Crow and Mr. Wenstrup have taken a number of steps, including this week, to speed up the process. A separate bill they drafted would remove the requirement for Afghan special immigrant visa applicants to undergo medical examinations. There is only one clinic in the country that carries out the examinations – a German facility in Kabul – where some translators have to travel far under sometimes dangerous conditions. And the exams are pretty expensive, said Mr. Crow.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Republican from Illinois, and Earl Blumenauer, Democrat from Oregon, have taken another step to increase the number of visas available by 4,000. To date, around 15,000 visas have been approved since the program began, but only around 11,000 are still available – a number that, according to legislators, falls far short of what is needed.

“It was annoying: the dragging with the feet, the lack of coordination,” said Blumenauer. “It was incredibly frustrating. As a country, we have not met our responsibility. “

They found support in the other chamber from Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa and Lt. Col. Army National Guard, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire. The couple have written to the Biden government asking for 20,000 visas to be added to the program and a resolution to the bureaucratic problems that have caused the backlog.

“We are deeply concerned about the fate of these people after the withdrawal of US troops,” wrote the senators in a letter signed by 18 of their colleagues. “While this would be an increase compared to previous years, it is necessary to do everything in our power to support the program as long as the US has the appropriate capacities in the country.”

Ms. Shaheen last week introduced laws that would expand and modify the Afghan special visa program for immigrants, postpone medical examinations, and extend visas for spouses and children of allies killed while waiting for their visas to be processed.

“Leaders from both parties have shown their support,” said Crow. “I expect we will get expedited handling of these bills.”

The bills have attracted dozens of co-sponsors, and legislators from both parties have given the visa program strong support in the past. In December, under a huge fallback bill, Congress raised the overall visa program ceiling by 4,000 to 26,500.

Several non-profit groups and refugee lawyers are urging the Biden government to do more.

About 70 organizations recently wrote a letter to Mr. Biden urging his government to “immediately implement plans to evacuate vulnerable US-affiliated Afghans.”

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service who organized the campaign, points to a precedent in pointing to the 1975 evacuation of 130,000 Vietnamese refugees by the Ford government via Guam to the United States; 1996 Airlift of 6,600 Iraqi Kurds out of the country; and in 1999 the evacuation of 20,000 Kosovar Albanians to Fort Dix, NJ

“We promised them that we would not turn our backs on them and leave them behind,” said Ms. Vignarajah.

Abdul Wahid Forozan, 34, was a translator for the American military in Afghanistan, came to America a year and a half ago through the Visa program, is now married, a father and works as a concierge in College Park.

In an interview, he described the decision to leave Afghanistan as difficult and painful, but said it was his only option given the death threats he faced.

“Home is loved by everyone, nobody dislikes their country,” said Mr Forozan. “But if your life is in danger, if your family’s life is in danger, if you are threatened every day, I couldn’t live in Afghanistan.”

David Zucchino contributed to the coverage.

Tags Afghans, Congress, Helping, Rushes, seeking, Visas

Politics

As Wars Wind Down, Congress Revisits Presidential Powers

Post author By
Post date June 17, 2021

In turn, they believe, presidents will be more politically sensitive to using their powers to carry out military actions absent specific approval from Congress. Mr. Kaine, for instance, said Mr. Biden’s recent airstrikes in Syria, which he ordered without congressional authorization, “show that the executive branch, regardless of party, will continue to stretch its war powers.”

President Barack Obama more or less dared Congress in 2015 to debate the use of military force abroad, but both parties refused for opposite reasons. Republicans were loath to grant Mr. Obama authority because they disapproved of his foreign policies, and Democrats were still stinging from the vote in 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq.

But time and the resident of the White House have shifted the ground, and a broad group supports a repeal of the 2002 authorization including the conservative Heritage Foundation and Concerned Veterans for America, as well as VoteVets, a liberal nonprofit group that supports Democrats, and the American Legion, the veterans’ advocacy group.

Mr. Obama sent mixed messages about his view of presidential war powers, and President Donald J. Trump would have vetoed efforts to eliminate the 2002 authorization. But Mr. Biden, who was once the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has always been more sympathetic toward the constitutional role that Congress has on matters of war.

“The president is committed to working with the Congress to ensure that outdated authorizations for the use of military force are replaced with a narrow and specific framework appropriate to ensure that we can continue to protect Americans from terrorist threats,” the White House said in a statement.

The remaining uncertainty may be one or two Senate Democrats and several Senate Republicans who remain skeptical of the repeal. This week, Senators Joni Ernst of Iowa, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, John Thune of South Dakota and other Republicans said in interviews that they were open to repeal of the 2002 measure.

“It’s something we’re all I think going to be looking at,” Mr. Thune said.

Mr. Young, a retired Marine captain, may be persuasive in helping round up Republican support for the Senate bill being pushed by Mr. Kaine, who has worked on this issue for decades.

Tags Congress, powers, Presidential, Revisits, Wars, Wind

Politics

F.B.I. Is Pursuing ‘A whole bunch’ in Capitol Riot Inquiry, Wray Tells Congress

Post author By
Post date June 16, 2021

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. is pursuing potentially hundreds more suspects in the Capitol riot, the agency’s director told Congress on Tuesday, calling the effort to find those responsible for the deadly assault “one of the most far-reaching and extensive” investigations in the bureau’s history.

“We’ve already arrested close to 500, and we have hundreds of investigations that are still ongoing beyond those 500,” Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, told the House Oversight Committee.

His assurances of how seriously the agency was taking the attack by a pro-Trump mob came as lawmakers pressed him and military commanders on why they did not do more to prevent the siege despite threats from extremists to commit violence.

“The threats, I would say, were everywhere,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who is the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee. “The system was blinking red.”

Ms. Maloney confronted Mr. Wray with messages from the social media site Parler, which she said referred threats of violence to the F.B.I. more than 50 times before the attack on Jan. 6. One message, which Ms. Maloney said Parler had sent to an F.B.I. liaison on Jan. 2, was from a poster who warned, “Don’t be surprised if we take the Capitol building,” and “Trump needs us to cause chaos to enact the Insurrection Act.”

“I do not recall hearing about this particular email,” Mr. Wray replied. “I’m not aware of Parler ever trying to contact my office.”

In hearings before two congressional committees on Tuesday, lawmakers sought new information about the security failures that helped lead to the violence.

At one hearing, Ms. Maloney presented her committee’s research into the delayed response of the National Guard, which showed that the Capitol Police and Washington officials made 12 “urgent requests” for their support and that Army leaders told the National Guard to “stand by” five times as the violence escalated.

“That response took far too long,” Ms. Maloney said. “This is a shocking failure.”

Documents obtained by the committee showed that, beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 6, top officials at the Defense Department received pleas for help from the Capitol Police chief, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington and other officials. But the National Guard did not arrive until 5:20 p.m., more than four hours after the Capitol perimeter had been breached.

“The National Guard was literally waiting, all ready to go, and they didn’t receive the green light for a critical time period, hours on end,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California and a member of the committee.

Lawmakers had tough questions for Gen. Charles Flynn, who commands the U.S. Army Pacific, and Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, the director of the Army staff, both of whom were involved in a key phone call with police leaders during the riot in which Army officials worried aloud about the “optics” of sending in the Guard, according to those involved. It was the first time lawmakers had heard from either general.

In their testimony, they described the frantic call in which the chiefs of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police became agitated as they tried unsuccessfully to get military support while rioters attacked their officers at the Capitol.

“Both speakers on the phone sounded highly agitated and even panicked,” General Flynn recalled.

By contrast, he said, General Piatt was a “calm” and “combat-experienced leader.”

General Piatt has defended his caution in initially advising against sending in the National Guard, telling the committee that he was “definitely concerned” in the days before Jan. 6 “about the public perception of using soldiers to secure the election process in any manner that could be viewed as political.”

He told the committee that National Guard forces were “not trained, prepared or equipped to conduct this type of law enforcement operation.”

“When people’s lives are on the line, two minutes is too long,” General Piatt said. “But we were not positioned for that urgent request. We had to re-prepare so we would send them in prepared for this new mission.”

General Flynn is the brother of Michael T. Flynn, President Donald J. Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser who has emerged as one of the former president’s biggest promoters of the lie of a stolen election.

In submitted testimony, General Flynn said he had not participated in the call but merely overheard portions of it when he entered the room while it was in progress. He said that he had not heard any discussion of political considerations with regard to sending in the Guard.

“I did not use the word ‘optics,’ nor did I hear the word used during the call on Jan. 6, 2021,” he said.

The panel did not hear testimony from the acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda D. Pittman, who declined to attend, citing her need to hear testimony at the other hearing, before the House Administration Committee. Republicans were quick to criticize her decision and repeatedly referred to her absence during the session, which stretched into the evening.

Ms. Maloney said she was also “disappointed,” but she added that Chief Pittman had committed to testifying on July 21.

In a simultaneous session on Tuesday afternoon, the House Administration Committee heard testimony from Michael A. Bolton, the Capitol Police inspector general, and Gretta L. Goodwin, the director of homeland security and justice for the Government Accountability Office.

Mr. Bolton testified about his fourth investigative report into the failures of Jan. 6, which found that the department’s tactical unit did not have access to “adequate training facilities” or adequate policies in place for securing ballistic helmets and vests (two dozen were stolen during the riot); the agency’s first responder unit was also not equipped with adequate less-lethal weapons, among other findings.

Mr. Bolton’s reports found that the Capitol Police had clearer warnings about the riot than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which “Congress itself is the target.” He also revealed that officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, in part because they feared that they lacked the training to handle the equipment needed to do so.

About 140 officers were injured during the attack, and seven people died in connection with the siege, including one officer who had multiple strokes after sparring with rioters.

“It is our duty to honor those officers who have given their lives but also ensuring the safety of all those working and visiting the Capitol complex by making hard changes within the department,” Mr. Bolton said.

Ms. Goodwin said that some of the command-and-control issues had been flagged by her agency in 2017. But the Capitol Police Board, which oversees the operations of the force, had not acted on the Government Accountability Office’s recommendations or responded to its requests for progress reports.

“As of today, the board has not provided us with any substantive information consistent with the practices noted above,” she said.

At previous hearings on the attack, some House Republicans used the opportunity to try to rewrite the history of what happened on Jan. 6, downplaying or outright denying the violence and deflecting efforts to investigate it.

On Tuesday, some Republicans on the Oversight Committee tried to redirect the inquiry into other topics, calling for investigations of Black Lives Matter protesters or the Biden family.

“I would love to ask about the Durham report, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hunter’s business dealings in China and a host of other things,” said Representative Jody B. Hice, Republican of Georgia.

The hearings came as Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, highlighted on the Senate floor an assessment from the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security that concluded that adherents to the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon were likely to try to carry out violence, “including harming perceived members of the ‘cabal’ such as Democrats and other political opposition.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on Tuesday that she was considering moving forward with a select committee to further investigate the Capitol riot.

Ms. Pelosi said her preference was for the Senate to approve a bipartisan commission, but that no longer seemed possible after Senate Republicans blocked it.

“We can’t wait any longer,” she said.

Emily Cochrane and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

Tags Capitol, Congress, FBI, hundreds, Inquiry, Pursuing, riot, tells, Wray

Politics

Voting Rights Invoice Falters in Congress as States Race Forward

Post author By
Post date June 2, 2021

WASHINGTON — In the national struggle over voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for turning back a wave of new restrictions in Republican-led states and expanding ballot access on their narrow majorities in Congress. Failure, they have repeatedly insisted, “is not an option.”

But as Republican efforts to clamp down on voting prevail across the country, the drive to enact the most sweeping elections overhaul in generations is faltering in the Senate. With a self-imposed Labor Day deadline for action, Democrats are struggling to unite around a strategy to overcome solid Republican opposition and an almost certain filibuster.

Republicans in Congress have dug in against the measure, with even the most moderate dismissing it as bloated and overly prescriptive. That leaves Democrats no option for passing it other than to try to force the bill through by destroying the filibuster rule — which requires 60 votes to put aside any senator’s objection — to pass it on a simple majority, party-line vote.

But Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Democrats’ decisive swing vote, has repeatedly pledged to protect the filibuster and is refusing to sign on to the voting rights bill. He calls the legislation “too darn broad” and too partisan, despite endorsing such proposals in past sessions. Other Democrats also remain uneasy about some of its core provisions.

Navigating the 800-page For the People Act, or Senate Bill 1, through an evenly split chamber was never going to be an easy task, even after it passed the House with only Democratic votes. But the Democrats’ strategy for moving the measure increasingly hinges on the longest of long shots: persuading Mr. Manchin and the other 49 Democrats to support both the bill and the gutting of the filibuster.

“We ought to be able to pass it — it really would be transformative,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said recently. “But if we have several members of our caucus who have just point-blank said, ‘I will not break the filibuster,’ then what are we even doing?”

Summarizing the party’s challenge, another Democratic senator who asked to remain anonymous to discuss strategy summed it up this way: The path to passage is as narrow as it is rocky, but Democrats have no choice but to die trying to get across.

The hand-wringing is likely to only intensify in the coming weeks. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, vowed to force a floor debate in late June, testing Mr. Manchin’s opposition and laying the groundwork to justify scrapping the filibuster rule.

“Hopefully, we can get bipartisan support,” Mr. Schumer said. “So far, we have not seen any glimmers on S. 1, and if not, everything is on the table.”

The stakes, both politically and for the nation’s election systems, are enormous.

The bill’s failure would allow the enactment of restrictive new voting measures in Republican-led states such as Georgia, Florida and Montana to take effect without legislative challenge. Democrats fear that would empower the Republican Party to pursue a strategy of marginalizing Black and young voters based on former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

If the measure passed, Democrats could effectively overpower the states by putting in place new national mandates that they set up automatic voter registration, hold regular no-excuse early and mail-in voting, and restore the franchise to felons who have served their terms. The legislation would also end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, restructure the Federal Election Commission and require super PACs to disclose their big donors.

A legion of advocacy groups and civil rights veterans argue that the fight is just starting.

“This game isn’t done — we are just gearing up for a floor fight,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, which are spending millions of dollars on television ads in states like West Virginia. “At the end of the day, every single senator is going to have to make a choice if they are going to vote to uphold the right to vote or uphold an arcane Senate rule. That is the situation that creates the pressure to act.”

Proponents of the overhaul on and off Capitol Hill have focused their attention for weeks on Mr. Manchin, a centrist who has expressed deep concerns about the consequences of pushing through voting legislation with the support of only one party. So far, they have taken a deliberately hands-off approach, betting that the senator will realize that there is no real compromise to be had with Republicans.

There is little sign that he has come to that conclusion on his own. Democrats huddled last week in a large conference room atop a Senate office building to discuss the bill, making sure Mr. Manchin was there for an elaborate presentation about why it was vital. Mr. Schumer invited Marc E. Elias, the well-known Democratic election lawyer, to explain in detail the extent of the restrictions being pushed through Republican statehouses around the country. Senators as ideologically diverse as Raphael Warnock of Georgia, a progressive, and Jon Tester of Montana, a centrist, warned what might happen if the party did not act.

Mr. Manchin listened silently and emerged saying his position had not changed.

“I’m learning,” he told reporters. “Basically, we’re going to be talking and negotiating, talking and negotiating, and talking and negotiating.”

Despite the intense focus on him, Mr. Manchin is not the only hurdle. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, is a co-sponsor of the election overhaul, but she has also pledged not to change the filibuster. A handful of other Democrats have shied away from definitive statements but are no less eager to do away with the rule.

“I’m not to that point yet,” Mr. Tester said. He also signaled he might be more comfortable modifying the bill, saying he “wouldn’t lose any sleep” if Democrats dropped a provision that would create a new public campaign financing system for congressional candidates. Republicans have pilloried it.

“First of all, we have to figure out if we have all the Democrats on board. Then we have to figure out if we have any Republicans on board,” Mr. Tester said. “Then we can answer that question.”

Republicans are hoping that by banding together, they can doom the measure’s prospects. They succeeded in deadlocking a key committee considering the legislation, though their opposition did not bar it from advancing to the full Senate. They accuse Democrats of using the voting rights provisions to distract from other provisions in the bill, which they argue are designed to give Democrats lasting political advantages. If they can prevent Mr. Manchin and others from changing their minds on keeping the filibuster, they will have thwarted the entire endeavor.

The Battle Over Voting Rights

Amid months of false claims by former President Donald J. Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states are marching ahead to pass laws making it harder to vote and changing how elections are run, frustrating Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.

- A Key Topic: The rules and procedures of elections have become a central issue in American politics. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning law and justice institute at New York University, counts 361 bills in 47 states that seek to tighten voting rules. At the same time, 843 bills have been introduced with provisions to improve access to voting.
- The Basic Measures: The restrictions vary by state but can include limiting the use of ballot drop boxes, adding identification requirements for voters requesting absentee ballots, and doing away with local laws that allow automatic registration for absentee voting.
- More Extreme Measures: Some measures go beyond altering how one votes, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules, clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives, and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections.
- Pushback: This Republican effort has led Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws. A sweeping voting rights bill passed the House in March, but faces difficult obstacles in the Senate. Republicans have remained united against the proposal and even if the bill became law, it would likely face steep legal challenges.
- Florida: Measures here include limiting the use of drop boxes, adding more identification requirements for absentee ballots, requiring voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, limiting who could collect and drop off ballots, and further empowering partisan observers during the ballot-counting process.
- Texas: The next big move could happen here, where Republicans in the legislature are brushing aside objections from corporate titans and moving on a vast election bill that would be among the most severe in the nation. It would impose new restrictions on early voting, ban drive-through voting, threaten election officials with harsher penalties and greatly empower partisan poll watchers.
- Other States: Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill that would limit the distribution of mail ballots. The bill, which includes removing voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years, may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted there. Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and make the distribution of water within certain boundaries of a polling station a misdemeanor. Iowa has also imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day. And bills to restrict voting have been moving through the Republican-led Legislature in Michigan.

“I don’t think they can convince 50 of their members this is the right thing to do,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “I think it would be hard to explain giving government money to politicians, the partisan F.E.C.”

In the meantime, Mr. Manchin is pushing the party to embrace what he sees as a more palatable alternative: legislation named after Representative John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon who died last year, that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

That measure would revive a mandate that states and localities with patterns of discrimination clear election law changes with the federal government in advance, a requirement Mr. Manchin has suggested should be applied nationwide.

The senator has said he prefers the approach because it would restore a practice that was the law of the land for decades and enjoyed broad bipartisan support of the kind necessary to ensure the public’s trust in election law.

In reality, though, that bill has no better chance of becoming law without getting rid of the filibuster. Since the 2013 decision, when the justices asked Congress to send them an updated pre-clearance formula for reinstatement, Republicans have shown little interest in doing so.

Only one, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, supports legislation reinstating the voting rights provision in the Senate. Asked recently about the prospect of building more Republican support, Ms. Murkowski pointed out that she had been unable to attract another co-sponsor from her party in the six years since the bill was first introduced.

Complicating matters, it has yet to actually be reintroduced this term and may not be for months. Because any new enforcement provision would have to pass muster with the courts, Democrats are proceeding cautiously with a series of public hearings.

All that has created an enormous time crunch. Election lawyers have advised Democrats that they have until Labor Day to make changes for the 2022 elections. Beyond that, they could easily lose control of the House and Senate.

“The time clock for this is running out as we approach a midterm election when we face losing the Senate and even the House,” said Representative Terri A. Sewell, a Democrat who represents the so-called Civil Rights Belt of Alabama and is the lead sponsor of the bill named for Mr. Lewis.

“If the vote and protecting the rights of all Americans to exercise that most precious right isn’t worth overcoming a procedural filibuster,” she said, “then what is?”

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.

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