GOP Rep. on cyber committee dumped MSFT stock shortly before $10B Pentagon contract was scrapped [View all]
Source: Salon
Rep. Pat Fallon, a first-term Republican from Texas, sold a large block of Microsoft stock just two weeks before the Pentagon announced it was scrapping a cloud computing deal with the company valued at up to $10 billion over the next decade, according to financial disclosure reports.
The previously unreported June 21 sale, listed on disclosure forms as between $100,000 and $250,000, was especially notable in light of the freshman congressman's assignment on the House Armed Services Committee's brand new Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems, which has oversight of the deal in question, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. The Pentagon officially announced it was terminating the deal on July 6.
If Fallon had any prior knowledge of the state of the contract through his subcommittee assignment, the well-timed sale could be evidence of criminal insider trading, according to Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor and former White House ethics attorney under George W. Bush. Such charges are difficult to prove, however, because members of Congress may withhold evidence by invoking the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, which offers legislators special protections from investigation by the executive branch.
The investments nonetheless raise concerns over the ethical problems that members of Congress create when they trade individual stocks within an industry their actions have the potential to influence.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-rep-on-cyber-committee-dumped-msft-stock-shortly-before-10b-pentagon-contract-was-scrapped/ar-AAMa9Vy?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=DELLDHP
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