[mandevil]

This is false. Then-sitting Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY) pled guilty and was sentenced to 26 months in prison for insider-trading back in 2019-2020. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump as one of his last official acts as President, but Collins still spent 10 weeks in prison for insider-trading as a sitting congressman (this was for knowledge he gained outside of his duties as a congressman, it was knowledge he got as a member of the Board of a company).

Congresspersons separately aren't allowed to trade on things they learn from their job- that was banned in 2012 under the STOCK act.

[dmoy]

Banned, but not enforced, and due to the 2013 removal of electronic disclosure requirements, harder to detect?

https://campaignlegal.org/update/part-2-stock-act-failed-eff...

[mandevil]

Eh, my take is that the electronic disclosure stuff makes this more annoying for the activists- the people who are building dashboards of Congressional performance etc.- but doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the problem. The activists still build their dashboards, still comb through the documents and find things that look really bad, it's just slightly more out of date and slightly more work for them.

I do think that something like the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act (everything in a blind trust), or its even more draconian (no blind trusts, just sell!) Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act will probably pass, eventually. Those are general markers for where we are going. But to just say "It's not illegal if you are a Member of Congress" is flat wrong and encourages a level of cynicism that makes it harder to actually fix the problems we face today.

[tootie]

And really, the stuff banned by the STOCK act is separate from insider trading which is why it needed a separate rule.