A freshman Republican congresswoman from South Carolina appears to have violated a federal conflicts-of-interest and financial transparency law by improperly disclosing millions of dollars in financial trades.
Rep. Sheri Biggs was weeks or months late disclosing more than 170 stock, treasury bill and corporate security trades made by her husband, Bill Biggs, according to a NOTUS analysis of a congressional financial document she filed this week with the House.
The trades’ combined value: between $4.14 million and $13.62 million. (Lawmakers are only required to disclose their trades in broad ranges.)
Dozens of those trades came in the form of stock sales made on March 18, a day when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent provided key details about President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff binge on April 2, which would cause financial markets to temporarily plummet.
Federal lawmakers have 45 days to publicly disclose any purchase or sale of stock, bond, cryptocurrency and other security trades made by themselves, their spouse or a dependent child, according to the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, of 2012.
Biggs’ congressional office acknowledged NOTUS’ request for comment but did not otherwise respond to several phone calls and emails. Biggs named “fiscal responsibility” as one of five planks in her 2024 campaign platform.
“She chose to be a public servant, so it’s perfectly reasonable for her constituents to question these trades, particularly since they were not disclosed consistent with existing federal law,” said Donald Sherman, the executive director and chief counsel for nonprofit government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which supports barring members of Congress from trading individual stocks.
In her congressional financial disclosure, Biggs described most of the trades as falling within a “professionally managed account.”
In the eyes of Congress, there’s no legal distinction between a federal lawmaker personally executing a financial trade and a financial adviser or professional broker executing a trade on their behalf.
Lawmakers are “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.”
The standard fine for a first-time STOCK Act violator is $200, although the House Committee on Ethics may waive the penalty.
Tom Rust, the chief counsel for the ethics committee, which administers STOCK Act violations, declined to comment on Biggs’ stock-trade disclosure.
Biggs’ husband’s newly disclosed trades include shares of numerous common stocks, such as Apple, Comcast, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, railroad company Norfolk Southern, insurance company Progressive, Starbucks, United Parcel Service and tobacco companies Altria Group and Philip Morris International.
Biggs also disclosed trades of various stocks connected to foreign companies. They include the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, the China Construction Bank and the China Merchants Bank. Some six- and seven-figure trades involve corporate securities made through “structured investment” products associated with Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Bank of Nova Scotia.
She also disclosed an investment of up to $250,000 in the cryptocurrency fund iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.
Biggs’ most notable legislative accomplishment during her first year in office is passage in the House of the Made-in-America Defense Act — an act she sponsored that aims to enhance direct sales of U.S.-made defense materials to allies. Among her tardy trade disclosures: the sale of up to $50,000 worth of stock in defense contractor Northrop Grumman, on March 19.
Biggs joins at least two-dozen other members of Congress who’ve seemingly also violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions.
They include fellow Republicans Sen. Markwayne Mullin and Reps. Dan Meuser, Lisa McClain, Austin Scott, Neal Dunn, Scott Franklin, Brandon Gill, Hal Rogers, Tim Moore, Troy Nehls and Rich McCormick.
STOCK Act violators among Democrats include Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Dwight Evans, Jamie Raskin, Chellie Pingree, Shri Thanedar, George Whitesides, Ritchie Torres, Jonathan Jackson, Donald Norcross, Tom Suozzi, George Latimer, Val Hoyle and Jared Huffman.
Dozens of other lawmakers have violated the STOCK Act in recent years. And earlier this month, NOTUS reported that Rep. Cleo Fields, a Louisiana Democrat, purchased up to $200,000 worth of Oracle stock in the hours and days before Trump revealed that the tech company would play a central role in a deal to spin off TikTok from its Chinese parent company.
The repeated violations of current congressional stock-trading law have in part prompted a bipartisan coalition of federal lawmakers to demand Congress bar its members from buying and selling individual stocks altogether to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest.
In the House, members of Congress ranging from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, to Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, are touting the Restore Trust in Congress Act, an amalgamation of several previously introduced stock-ban bills. In July, a Senate committee advanced a similar measure, known as the HONEST Act, to the full chamber.
“Public opinion is at an all-time low for Congress. Public support for a stock ban, bipartisan support, is overwhelming,” Sherman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said. “Members of Congress have ever incentive to do this — except for their financial portfolios. This is an easy win for them. Take ‘yes’ as an answer.”