Lisa McClain Violated the STOCK Act for the Second Time This Year

Republican Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan has violated a federal financial transparency and conflicts-of-interest law for the second time this year, according to a NOTUS review of congressional disclosures.

McClain was months late publicly disclosing between $360,000 and $900,000 worth of stock trades made by her husband, Michael, according to the disclosures.

McClain acknowledged that “there are several transactions from my husband’s tax-deferred account” that she reported late, in an Oct. 20 letter to House Clerk Kevin F. McCumber.

“My team and I are committed to providing accurate information quickly and in a transparent, forthright manner,” McClain wrote. “Moreover, I am taking aggressive measures to ensure full compliance in the future.”

McClain’s congressional office did not respond to messages left by phone and email. It is unclear whether McClain has paid a fine for her late filings, which begins at $200 for a first offense and incrementally increases thereafter.

Among the trades: up to $450,000 worth of sales during June of stock in government contractor Palantir Technologies, after a long rise in the stock’s share price.

Other late trades that went well past a 45-day stock trade disclosure deadline mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act include shares of NuScale Power Corporation, Tesla Inc., Nvidia Corporation, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Rigetti Computing Inc. and BigBear.ai Inc., another notable government contractor.

McClain is a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, including its Subcommittee on Capital Markets. The committee’s legislative jurisdiction includes securities, exchanges, banks and federal monetary policy.

In August, NOTUS reported that McClain, a three-term Michigan congresswoman, was late reporting more than 500 stock and bond transactions made by her husband. Together, they were potentially worth millions of dollars. (Lawmakers are only required to disclose the values of stock trades in broad ranges.)

The STOCK Act requires all members of Congress to disclose stock trades for themselves, their spouses and any dependent children.

Lawmakers are also “personally responsible for incomplete and inaccurate information” in their financial reports, a financial disclosure instruction guide from the House Committee on Ethics reads, “regardless of who assisted in preparation.”

But numerous lawmakers have this decade joined McClain in violating the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions, including more than two dozen this year, according to reports by NOTUS and other news organizations.

Democratic Reps. Pat Ryan of New York, Donald Norcross of New Jersey and Val Hoyle of Oregon, as well as Republican Reps. Troy Nehls of Texas, Rich McCormick of Georgia and Sheri Biggs of South Carolina, have each violated the STOCK Act since last month.

These incessant STOCK Act violations have, in part, driven a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to advance legislation that aims to ban members of Congress and their immediate families from trading individual stocks.