Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was heckled as she appeared to be enjoying a drink in one of the establishments in her home city of San Francisco when she was confronted by a man who had one big question he wanted her to answer.
In a short video clip posted online, Pelosi appeared to be caught off guard by a male who asked her: “Nancy, can you tell us why we have over $150 billion going to Ukraine when we have homeless on the streets in your own city?”
Others intervened in the man’s interaction with her, but he remained undeterred as he continued to take the opportunity to interrogate the former House Speaker, asking: “Nancy, can I get stock tips on how to get semiconductors in Taiwan?”
Pelosi heckled in San Francisco: “Can you tell us why we have over $150 billion going to Ukraine when we have homeless on the streets in your own city”
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) February 26, 2023
A financial disclosure form filed at the end of the year indicated that Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, did not experience a good quarter of stock performance in the final quarter of 2022.
A total of $2.5 million in stock value was lost by the Pelosis, mainly in four stocks including $853K on PayPal, $733K on Salesforce options, $500K on Tesla stock, and $235K on Roblox optionsstock.
According to Business Insider, there are a number of additional findings:
Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, lost over half a million dollars selling Tesla stock in December as Elon Musk’s electric vehicle and solar panel manufacturer sank amid broader fears about his focus company after his takeover of Twitter.
An investor and venture capitalist, Pelosi’s husband is one of the most prodigious traders connected to a lawmaker. He’s made tens of millions of dollars in stock trades during the past few years, congressional records indicate.
In total, Pelosi reported losing over $2.5 million in the final weeks of 2022. His trades appear to be an example of harvesting, an investing strategy where traders sell some investments at a loss in order to lower the taxes they will face for more successful parts of their portfolio.
During the latter part of her tenure as speaker of the House, the Pelosis’ stock trades became a major issue of contention due to the fact that they were made in a timely manner and either made money for the couple or avoided losses, leading to allegations that they had committed insider trading.
According to a set of disclosures, Pelosi sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia in July for around $165.05, resulting in a loss of $341,365.
“One month later, Nvidia revealed that the federal government imposed export restrictions on the company’s A100 and forthcoming H100 circuits. The new regulations will ‘address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia,’ Nvidia said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission,” The Daily Wire reported in September.
“Shares in Nvidia fell 7.7% on the news and a total of 16% since Pelosi sold shares on July 26. Pelosi — who was arrested after alleged drunk driving earlier this year — formerly exercised 200 call options on their expiration date of June 17 at a strike price of $100, according to more federal filings,” according to The Daily Wire report.
Drew Hammill, the Speaker’s spokesman, told Fox News that the Speaker was unaware of the financial transactions of her husband.
However, that and other convenient stock trades led Congress to pass legislation banning members from dealing in stocks while serving, which then-Speaker Pelosi initially opposed, drawing angry responses from Democrats.
“This moment marks a failure of House leadership — and it’s yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill, as I have long made known,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) said in a since-deleted statement posted to her House website at the time.
“Rather than bring Members of Congress together who are passionate about this issue, leadership chose to ignore these voices, push them aside, and look for new ways they could string the media and the public along — and evade public criticism. As part of their diversionary tactics, the House Administration Committee was tasked with creating a new piece of legislation — and they ultimately introduced a kitchen-sink package that they knew would immediately crash upon arrival, with only days remaining before the end of the legislative session and no time to fix it,” she added.
“It’s apparent that House leadership does not have its heart in this effort, because the package released earlier this week was designed to fail,” she further noted.
