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Weeks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the ability of members of Congress and their spouses to make stock trades, the California Democrat disclosed several major purchases.
According to a public disclosure report dated Dec. 29, Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, spent between $500,001 and $1 million on 10 call options for Google parent company Alphabet with a strike price of $2,000 and up to $1.25 million on 130 call options for Salesforce.com with a strike price of $210.
Call options give the buyer the right to buy a stock at a given price before a certain date, but the buyer is not required to purchase the stock.
Mr. Pelosi purchased 50 call options of Walt Disney Company, spending between $100,001 and $250,000. The strike price of $130 expires Sept. 16, 2022.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GOOG | ALPHABET INC. | 2,920.05 | -10.04 | -0.34% |
| DIS | THE WALT DISNEY CO. | 155.92 | +1.06 | +0.68% |
| CRM | SALESFORCE.COM INC. | 255.37 | +0.80 | +0.31% |
| MU | MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC. | 93.89 | -2.28 | -2.37% |
| RBLX | ROBLOX CORP. | 100.43 | +3.11 | +3.20% |
He also put up to $100,000 toward a limited liability company that acquired five Courtyard by Marriott hotels, one in Fairfax, Virginia; two in suburban Baltimore, Maryland; and two in San Antonio, Texas.
He also purchased call options for video game maker Roblox Corporation and chipmaker Micron Technology.
At a Dec. 15 news conference, Pelosi explained why she believes that members of Congress and their spouses should be able to buy and sell individual stocks.
Pelosi talks to reporters during her weekly news conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center Dec. 15, 2021, in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images / Getty Images)
“We’re a free market economy, and people should be able to participate in that,” Pelosi said.
PELOSI DEFENDS LAWMAKERS, SPOUSES TRADING STOCKS: ‘WE’RE A FREE-MARKET ECONOMY’
The December transactions follow purchases from earlier this year. On May 21, Paul Pelosi spent up to $250,000 on 50 Apple calls that have a strike price of $100 and that expire June 17, 2022. He also bought 20 Amazon calls, costing up to $1 million, that have a strike price of $3,000 and that also expire on June 17, 2022.
Paul Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi attend the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton April 28, 2018, in Washington. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
On June 18, he exercised his Alphabet call options giving him the right to buy 4,000 shares at a price of $1,200 apiece, or $4.8 million. The Alphabet call options were originally purchased on Feb. 27, 2020.
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The House Judiciary Committee on June 11 advanced a series of bills with bipartisan support that would limit the powers of tech giants, including Apple, Amazon, Google and others.
In March, Mr. Pelosi exercised $1.95 million worth of Microsoft call options less than two weeks before the tech stalwart secured a $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with augmented reality headsets. In January, he purchased up to $1 million of Tesla calls before the Biden administration delivered its plans to provide incentives to promote the shift away from traditional automobiles and toward electric vehicles.
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“The speaker has no involvement or prior knowledge of these transactions,” a spokesperson for Pelosi’s office told FOX Business in July. “The speaker does not own any stock.”
Former Rep. Jill Long Thompson, D-Ind., said that Paul Pelosi’s purchases would be legal unless he acted on nonpublic information, which she said seems unlikely because it is doubtful that he would “have any information that someone else wouldn’t.”