Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is responding to criticism over her purchase of several stocks while the stock market was plunging over President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
During the dip and then sudden rise following word that Trump was considering a 90-day pause on tariffs, Greene bought stock from several companies that include Lululemon, Dell Computer, Amazon, the parent of Restoration Hardware and others.
Data from a required three-page financial holdings document doesn’t disclose exactly how much she paid for the stocks, only ranges and dates. Those purchases ranged from $1,001 to $15,000.
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The move has Democrats calling for investigations into Greene over potential insider trading.
“We need an investigation into insider trading by people like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. We need an investigation into whether any K Street lobbyists or other big firms were tipped off by Donald Trump’s actions,” Texas Democrat Rep. Gregorio Casar told Newsweek Magazine.
In a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Greene said her financial advisor did the purchases.
“I have signed a fiduciary agreement to allow my financial advisor to control my investments. All of my investments are reported with full transparency. I refuse to hide my stock trades in a blind trust like may others do,” Greene wrote.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump made a statement saying, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” He ended the post with the letters DJT, both his initials and the stock market ticker of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, the firm in which he holds a majority stake.
Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has been leading a push to ban members of Congress from being able to trade stocks.
“We have extraordinary access to confidential information, and we shouldn’t be playing the stock market while we’re serving the public,” Ossoff told Channel 2 Action News in a previous interview.
Presidents of the United States and their immediate families are already banned from trading on the market. Their investments must be placed in a blind trust managed by others.
“We’ve seen for years that there have been people like Nancy Pelosi, her husband Paul Pelosi, who touts himself to be an investor-type millionaire guy that does better than Warren Buffett. Well, how does he get that information?” said Ted Jenkin, president of Atlanta-based Exit Stage Left advisors. “Nobody that’s an elected official at that level should be able to trade in the stock market without a blind trust, in my view.”
Greene called any investigation into the matter “utterly absurd,” Newsweek reported.
