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"60 Minutes" Questions Pelosi, Boehner's Insider Investments

Staff Reporters |
November 13, 2011 | 7:57 p.m. PST

CBS's 60 Minutes accused powerful members of Congress -- including Republican Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- of insider trading and "soft corruption" during its Sunday night broadcast.

The report, based off the research of Peter Schweizer, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, also targeted Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R), ex-Sen. Judd Gregg (R) and former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R). Schweizer said the nation's lawmakers were guilty of "forms of honest graft" or using their political power for personal gains, according to POLITICO.

“So it’s not illegal, but I think it’s highly unethical, I think it’s highly offensive, and wrong,” Schweizer told 60 Minutes.

From POLITICO:

Bachus, as ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, traded stock options for General Electric, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and Sony, among others in the midst of the 2008 U.S. financial crisis. Bachus was getting briefed by top officials at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve about the impending collapse of the American financial markets. His stock trades, which were first reported on by the Wall Street Journal in April 2010, netted the Alabama Republican about $28,000, according to his financial disclosure reports.

Boehner bought health-care stocks in 2009 shortly before the “public option” – universal health care – was dropped from the Democratic health care bill. Boehner said his financial adviser oversees all such decisions.

Paul Pelosi, husband of the then-speaker, bought $2 million worth of Visa stock in March 2008. The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill in October 2008 - just weeks before the elections - addressing “swipe fees,” the charges assessed by credit-card companies on their debit cards.

Both Boehner and Pelosi's offices have denied 60 Minutes claims.

See the full story here.



 

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