As the list of lawmakers who have violated federal conflicts-of-interest and transparency rules with late stock-trade disclosures keeps getting longer, members of Congress are increasingly blaming their financial advisers for the screwups.
Rep. Dan Meuser, a Pennsylvania Republican, was almost a year late when last week he reported the sale of $750,000 to $1.5 million worth of his wife’s stock in Nvidia Corp., the computer chip company. Meuser chairs the House Committee on Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
“The mistake was made solely by my brokerage and benefited me in no way,” Meuser wrote in an email to NOTUS that referenced his stock broker a half-dozen times. “I acted promptly to correct it as soon as I became aware. The rules that exist for members of Congress must be followed and enforced, that is why I promptly notified the Ethics Committee of this error … I am very unhappy that this preventable error occurred, and I will be making clear to my brokerage that such errors are unacceptable and should not occur in the future.”