Tapper Calls Out Pelosi’s Opposition to Making Congress More Ethical

Subverting the expectations of some of his critics and going back to how he used to do things, CNN’s Jake Tapper spent over eight minutes on Thursday’s edition of The LeadNancy Pelosi, a Democratic Representative from California (D-CA), was criticized for opposing measures to make Congress more ethical or crack down on insider trading. Walter Shaub, the ex-director of the Office of Government Ethics was brought in to help her.

Immediately after returning from a commercial break, Tapper announced it was time for a “Conflict of Interest Watch.” He then likely made her fan base unhappy by warning that “The ethics experts” were “Today’s alarm was raised after Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker) said that she will not oppose a ban on Congressmen and their spouses being able to trade stocks during office hours..”

Chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju joined him and noted the Business Insider investigation that found “found that 49 Members of Congress and 182 senior-level congressional staffers” were in direct violation of the 2012 STOCK Act that was passed in an attempt to keep insider trading from occurring.

“People aren’t reporting, they should be. Because this is a free market and people – We are a free market economy they should be able to participate in that,” Pelosi sneered at journalists during her Wednesday press conference.

And when it was his turn to give his commentary and analysis, Shaub twice ripped up the Speaker’s pathetic argument:

Nancy Pelosi insists it’s free. However, the reality is that it is not truly a market. She has direct access to government information that isn’t available to the public and can influence traders’ trading behavior in ways that aren’t possible for them to see. This information is not always available to us, as we have limited access.

Shaub went further and rightly pointed out that “nobody kidnapped them and dragged them to Washington and said you must be in Congress and pointed a gun at their head. They chose to be there. They wanted us to allow them tremendous control over our lives. They owe us great transparency and lack of conflict of interest.”

“And I would just add the mere appearance that they are engaging in insider trading is just as bad as if they actually are,” he said. “Because we have a crisis of confidence in government right now and the public can’t just take their word for it.”

Tapper even seemed to take on those on the left who didn’t appreciate him and Shaub calling out the Democrats and the progressives for being corrupt, when they should be focusing on the Republicans threatening Democracy.

Shaub countered, pointing out the fact that corruption or the perception thereof was itself an act of voter suppression. “You want to talk about voter suppression, look at the sheer number of Americans who don’t vote. Some of them don’t vote because we put obstacles in their way but others don’t vote because they’ve given up,” he said.

“How are you going to convince these people who aren’t voting that they should participate and that it matters who is in Congress when you have members of Congress just willy-nilly trading stocks and creating the appearance of insider trading and actual conflicts of interest,” he rhetorically asked his critics.