By Dave Levinthal, Oklahoma Watch
For the second time in two weeks, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin has disclosed trades showing that he violated a federal conflicts of interest and financial transparency law.
A NOTUS analysis of a financial document Mullin filed Tuesday with the U.S. Senate revealed the Oklahoma lawmaker was months late disclosing nearly three dozen stock and bond transactions by him and his wife.
Taken together, the transactions — mostly sales — are worth between $1.4 million and $3.5 million. Lawmakers are only required to disclose the value of their trades in broad ranges.
The late disclosures follow an earlier slate of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tardy stock and municipal security filings — some up to two-and-a-half years past a 45-day deadline enshrined in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act — that Oklahoma Watch reported Aug. 5.
As it did last month, Mullin’s office declined to answer specific questions about the late filings and emailed Oklahoma Watch the same statement about the senator’s finances.
“Much like tax returns, financial disclosures occasionally need to be amended to reflect the most accurate, up-to-date information,” said a Mullin spokesperson. “That’s what we did here.”
Mullin uses an independent, third-party operator firm that manages all stock portfolio investments on his behalf. He does not conduct nor inform trades. The independent firm reports bi-weekly to Senate Ethics to ensure compliance with federal law, the spokesperson added.
Dozens of other federal lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans alike — have violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions in recent years. The latest example — Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar — told NOTUS that he is in the process of selling off his individual stocks.
Federal lawmakers have introduced several bills this year that would ban, or otherwise restrict, members of Congress and their immediate family from trading individual stocks.
The measures have attracted an unlikely coalition of Republicans and Democrats. Together, they broadly argue that the current STOCK Act is too weak to adequately defend against the specter of insider trading and conflicts of interest and too permissive toward lawmakers who violate — sometimes repeatedly — its transparency and disclosure provisions.
One such bill, the Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transaction Act, advanced last month out of a Senate committee thanks to Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri teaming with the committee’s Democrats.
President Donald Trump has said he’s open, in principle, to signing a congressional stock-trade ban, although he’s warned Congress that he doesn’t want the ban to extend to the White House.
Both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have expressed openness to a congressional stock-trade ban. But no such bill has yet received a vote in either the full House or Senate.
——
This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS, a publication of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute, and Oklahoma Watch.
Dave Levinthal is a NOTUS journalist covering the federal government for Oklahoma Watch. Contact hin at davelevinthal@notus.org.
Oklahoma Watch is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) corporation that produces in-depth and investigative journalism as a public service for the benefit of all Oklahomans.
Leave a Reply