 For more on this, we are joined by Maggie Severance who wrote the story for Politico. She joins us from Washington, DC. Thank you for doing this, Maggie. Thanks for having me. Tell me about the study. Who conducted it? How long did it take? And where did you get this information? Yeah, so this took about three months for me and one researcher to go through all 21,000 plus trades that lawmakers have done over the last two years. So from April 2015 up almost until the present. And, you know, all this information is actually available online. So lawmakers are required to disclose any stock transactions they make within 30 days. The only, you know, it's information that is available, but not a lot of people use it. So we thought it would be worth kind of doing some digging and seeing what's in there. They made a combined total of more than 21,300 trades. According to your research, did they make a lot of money? Do we know if they made a fortune or is it just gambling? You know, we did not calculate if they made a fortune or not. Some of the trades that we feature in the story, it looks like they probably lost money. But it's, you know, it's difficult because the lawmakers are, they have to disclose information. It's only in a very broad range. So someone would say, well, I bought between $1,000 and $50,000 of stock and I sold between $1,000 and $50,000 of stock. So you really have no idea if they sold off just a little bit or a lot in a lot of cases. It's one reason that some people argue that this information should be much, they should have to disclose much more specific information on what they're doing so that we can have a better idea of what happens. Dr. Tom Price from Georgia used to be a congressman. They were holding hearings earlier this year when he was nominated for Health and Human Services. He's now head of Health and Human Services trying to dismantle Obamacare. He was accused of inside trading and was it against the law? Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the trades that we talk about in our story and kind of what happened with Tom Price is that you can trade stocks based on knowledge that's public, but maybe not very well known. You know, things are kind of known on Capitol Hill, but maybe not known on the general public. And that's not insider trading unless it's tightly held non-public information. Now with Tom Price people, you don't have all the facts there, but he had done a number of transactions in healthcare stocks while working on healthcare bills, and then he had invested in one company repeatedly that is another house colleague, Chris Collins, is the biggest investor in that company. So there was a question there over whether Chris Collins might have told Tom Price something about his investments that led Tom Price to then invest in that company. It's a very small company called innate immunotherapeutic. So there's really not a reason that Tom Price would have heard about it if it wasn't through Chris Collins. Was it information that Chris Collins gleaned from a hearing or just because he is so involved with the company? You know, we don't know. And you know, Collins has said repeatedly that he's really involved in this company and he'll talk about it to anyone who will listen. You know, just how great it is and the work they're doing developing pharmaceuticals. One thing that we feature in our story is that actually as all of this was coming to light, there were five other house lawmakers who also invested in that company, presumably based either on public information about their colleagues investing or based on, you know, something they had heard from Price or Collins. And it's, we, you know, it's impossible to know exactly what happened in conversations between, you know, private conversations between lawmakers. We can only kind of record what's in the public record and report out kind of around that to see, get a general idea of how these trades are working. Is the preponderance of this, I don't even know if it's insider trading. Is it mostly Republicans who are doing this? You write that Sheldon Whitehouse is also, I don't want to say guilty, but he's a Democrat, right? Yeah, we found it's actually pretty even, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans when we're, when we're just tallying overall the number of members of Congress who have made at least one trade. It was pretty split between Democrats and Republicans. So this is bipartisan issue. Is it mostly in defense and healthcare stock? Sheldon Whitehouse, he's the Rhode Island Democrat, and he sits on the help committee. What is the help committee? And what did he end up buying? And why isn't the stock act preventing all this? Yeah, so, you know, our story features a number of transactions that tend to be in kind of defense, health and energy, because those are areas where it's very, it's kind of very clear if something, you know, is an energy company and it's a bill is affected, or if that company is affected by a specific bill. In Sheldon Whitehouse's case, he bought and sold a number of stocks leading up to passage of the 21st century Cures bill, which was a $6.3 billion bill that pumped money into medical research and a number of other causes. And Whitehouse had been working on different parts of the bill in the weeks leading up to lawmakers kind of announcing that they had finally worked out an agreement and they're going to pass this and it's going to be signed by the president. He bought healthcare stocks several times and then sold some of them shortly after President Obama signed the law. So, you know, like I was saying, there's this difference between is something insider trading and is something morally or ethically questionable and maybe surprising to voters. We don't say that anyone in this story was insider trading. We don't have any evidence of that. I do think that these are things that are probably surprising to people who read them and just surprising to people who, you know, vote and expect that their members of Congress probably isn't doing this kind of stuff. You mentioned the Stock Act that was passed about five years ago after kind of a number of different kind of dubious stock trades made by lawmakers, including Nancy Pelosi had come to light and Congress decided they wanted to put some restrictions on this. You know, this is a practice that you can't do if you work for the executive branch. And so they passed this law called the Stock Act that for the first time really officially made insider trading illegal for members of Congress. And it required these disclosures that required lawmakers to disclose their trades within 30 days. So the system we have right now, it's there's more disclosure than there used to be. And lawmakers are explicitly barred from insider trading, but really there haven't been no lawmaker has been prosecuted for insider trading. And I think a lot of the behavior that we're seeing that is surprising and shocking to people probably doesn't rise to the level frankly of insider trading, but it does rise to be a conflict of interest or something that, you know, a voter would not be satisfied with. It's disgusting. It's repulsive. And they shouldn't be spending any time trading stocks. They should be doing the business of representing us. Is the loophole in the Stock Act that a congressman or a senator can hear something that would be insider information? They can then pass it on to a relative and the relative can make the trade. And so the congressman or senator doesn't have to disclose it. Is that the loophole? You know, I, if that happens, we probably wouldn't wouldn't know about it. Like I said, I don't know how often people do that. And you know, if people, if someone really wanted to, they could open an offshore account and make all their trades through an offshore account and not disclose them. There are also no penalties for filing the disclosures late. You could do a bunch of things then disclose it five years later, because they really, you know, in order to encourage people to actually disclose their transactions, they keep a pretty open window. So there are a lot of kind of ways around being clear about what you're doing if you want to. We saw a lot of late disclosures when we were going through our filings of things that people were, things that people were reporting quite late. So it's, you know, if you want to get around it, I think you could get around it. The people that were mostly talking about the story disclose relatively on time. It's just information that a lot of people don't, you know, don't look at. And like I said, it's not, it's not necessarily insider trading, but it is behavior that I think people are surprised to learn about. Right. And I don't even think we know anymore what constitutes insider trading. It's a very specific violation of the law. Tell me about Adam Kinzinger, the Republican from Illinois. So Adam Kinzinger is another person featured in the story. He's a Republican who speaks pretty often about defense issues. And he went to a luncheon at a kind of national security intelligence and research firm. And then about a month later invested in that company when they were doing a private capital raise. So this is not a company that's available on the stock market, but he was given an opportunity to invest. And he did that. And, you know, that's a little bit of a twist on what we've been talking about so far, which is, you know, he decided that he wanted to invest in something that he may have learned about or it appears he, you know, had interactions with the company as in his official role as a member of Congress. So that's another thing we have to kind of ask yourself is that, is that something that people who vote for him would be comfortable with? If they, you know, will now, they will know about it if they had known about what was happening. Well, Joe Biden before he left office announced the cancer moonshot and Congressman Chuck Fleischman of Tennessee, what did he do? Yeah, so Chuck Fleischman. And to be clear, I should say, well, I'm on here, you know, all of these lawmakers who are talking about when we approach them about these trades, they said that they, the trades were made through stockbrokers and that they were, they were not the people individually doing these trades, which is what Tom Price said that too, right? Yeah, you know, which, you know, people, a lot of people have stockbrokers who, you know, some of them are able to, you know, independently do things that they're discretion, but we can get into that more later. But I was Chuck Fleischman, you know, he's an advocate for cancer research and Joe Biden was kind of busy lobbying Obama's idea to invest more in cancer research last summer and last fall. And he, multiple times, purchased stocks in specific companies that specifically specialized in cancer research. One of those purchases was made shortly after there was a gathering of industry leaders in Washington DC and the White House announced some new programs that were meant to help cancer research as part of that cancer moonshot. Tell me about Bob Corker, the Senator Republican from Tennessee. By the way, I'm not seeing too many Democrats, other than Sheldon Whitehouse. But those are, those are examples that we have in the story, but that doesn't mean it's not something that's happening, happening on both sides of the aisle. All right, Senator Bob Corker, by the way, this is red meat for me. The more Republicans I see doing this, the happier I am. But that's, but Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee, what did he do? Yeah, so Corker over the years has made a number of large purchases and sales and he, several times over the course of last year, bought and sold large amounts of stock in Chesapeake Energy, which during that time, Corker was an original co-sponsor on a bill to end the United States ban on exporting oil. And Chesapeake is one of the companies that joined forces to lobby for lifting that ban. So they were lobbying on this issue. Corker was working on this issue and trying to get this huge market moving policy change made. And while he was doing that, he was also buying large amounts and selling Chesapeake Energy stock. We're talking about, according to your article in Politico on Monday, we're talking about half a million dollars that he sold. At least half a million dollars, yeah. That's a lot of money. I mean, the Spencer Bacchus trade that I talked about earlier was only $5,000, but half a million dollars. That should raise some red flag, shouldn't it? Yeah, it's a lot, you know, which is why we felt it was worthy of including. It's a lot of money and it's, you know, one thing that researching and reporting the story, it's constantly eye opening is just how wealthy members of Congress are. Some of them have a lot of money and really complicated financial holdings. So it's, you know, those, those buying and selling more than half a million dollars worth of Chesapeake stock was surprising to us, but it wasn't the only time we saw people making large strides actions. Well, this I find very interesting because I do radio and radio has been destroyed by Clear Channel, which I believe now is owned by Bain Capital. They went bankrupt, but they bought up all these radio stations, racked up all this debt, fired everybody. And as I remember, Bain Capital now owns Clear Channel. Tell me about Texas Republican Congressman Mike McCall. His wife is the daughter of Lowry Mays, who founded Clear Channel. What kind of stock trading was Congressman Mike McCall doing? Yeah, so Mike McCall, like a number of law makers we looked at, he has a lot, you know, he's worth an estimated close to $300 million because of his wife being the Lowry Mays' daughter. And he has a huge stock portfolio, you know, and he is kind of, he was the most voluminous trader of the people we looked at. He had made more than 7,000 trades over the last two years, which puts him head and shoulders above the rest. And they're in a huge range of policy areas. So Mike McCall had been trading in just a lot of different stocks and voting on a lot of different issues. So it's kind of a broad question there about complex of interest. There's a part of me that just thinks these guys are degenerate gamblers. Anybody who trades like this, if you make 7,000 trades, it's really not about making money. I think it's about the rush because it's just irresponsible. They might as well go to a casino. Well, and you have to remember in a case like Mike McCall, it's probably, you know, a lot of this money is being most likely handled by a broker who is, you know, rebalancing the portfolio or reinvesting dividends or all those little transactions helped to, you know, in other cases, there is a pretty strong indication that lawmakers were directly involved in these trades, which is why we felt like it was an important issue to look at. Well, here's a Democrat from Oregon, Congressman Kurt Schrader. What did he do? Kurt Schrader is just another good example of a lawmaker who has a lot of investments, you know, is pretty wealthy. And he has invested in a number of pieces on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which handles both health care and energy related bills. And he had gotten sold stocks in a number just since the start of this year in a number of major health and energy companies. So when we're talking about kind of conflicts of interest and people who often vote on issues and helps tear legislation, he's one example of a lawmaker who his trades pose a clear potential conflict of interest with his work on Capitol Hill. Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington, what was his involvement with the Stock Act? Yeah, Brian Baird, you know, he was his idea back in the day. He was someone who had come up, you know, kind of come to Capitol Hill and seen this and he's a populist and was really surprised by the stock, you know, that insider trading wasn't illegal among lawmakers. And he introduced a bill, the Stock Act in 2006, and it really sat around for years until there was a very damning 60 minutes report about lawmakers buying and selling stocks. And I referenced it earlier, it kind of had information on a number of high profile lawmakers who had kind of made these dubious stock trades and all of a sudden people lined up behind the stock act and were excited to support it because I think Congress had been shamed a little bit into support until the bill quickly became law and that was, you know, a big achievement for him, even if we have seen some loopholes since, it's hard to get Congress to pass ethics reform and he did it. What's so funny in your article that made me laugh is these congressmen think like Trump. According to Baird, they think, quote, they're innately ethical. They don't only think they're above the law, but they think they're incapable of acting immorally. I mean, that's hysterical. Yeah, you know, I can't see, I can't see in everyone's head. I can't see what everyone's thinking or know exactly, but it was interesting hearing those kind of stories from former employees of lawmakers or a former lawmaker like Baird or people who are, who were exposed to this on a daily basis for a number of years and feels like there just isn't, Congress isn't inclined to police itself because people think individually they aren't part of the problem or aren't making any issues with their own investments. Well, this is just a great article in Politico and it's going to make you really angry, especially at Nancy Pelosi. Is it the ethics committee that's supposed to enforce this or according to the Stock Act, who should be looking? So, you know, if you were in federal trading, it would be investigated by the SEC and the SEC is looking into at least one potential in federal training case that we know of involving a staffer. The ethics committees, they play a different role, which is kind of setting up ethics guidelines and the ethics guidelines that are in place right now are very lax. They allow lawmakers to do a lot of things. So, there isn't a huge role for the ethics committees to play unless they want to change the roles, you know, which is something that is difficult as you can imagine to do, but it's not impossible. Unbelievable. Do you see anybody passing new legislation or is that just going to be impossible with this Senate? You know, it'll happen. I imagine it'll happen someday. I think this is an issue that when people know about it and when people talk about it, they feel like it's important. But it's, you know, the climate right now, the political climate is one in which kind of talking about ethics reform can imply jabs at President Trump. And so, people don't want to, you know, Republicans don't want to do it, which is, you know, I think understandable that we're kind of living in an era where talk of ethics has been, you know, politically weaponized to an extent. But on the other hand, it's sad to think that that's the state of affairs in Washington. I'll say it that way. There's so many ways to get rich when you get elected to the Senate or the House. It almost seems like insider trading is the least effective way to do it. You're going to end up being a lobbyist. You get to keep your war chest from the campaign. It just seems like it's a pretty low rent way to make a buck, right? You know, I haven't, I have not been a member of Congress or enjoyed many of those perks, so I can't tell you which is what's easy and what's not, but you're right that it's definitely right. You know, true insider trading is risky because they're a very real consequence of that. Yeah, it's just going to be a lobbyist. Well, I recommend this story. It'll upset you. I don't know what we can do about this, but you should definitely know about it. Maggie Severns writes for Politico. Her most recent story is reckless stock trading leaves Congress rife with conflicts. I know how busy you are. Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. Thanks for having me.