In what we can all be sure is just an amazing, one-in-a-million coincidence, Paul Pelosi — yes, Nancy Pelosi’s husband — sold half a million dollars worth of Visa stock just before the Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa.
Nancy Pelosi’s husband unloaded more than $500,000 worth of Visa stock — less than three months before the credit card giant was slapped with federal antitrust charges, public documents show.
Visa was hit with a lawsuit on Tuesday that alleged the company has illegally monopolized the debit card market — the culmination of a years-long review conducted by the Justice Department’s antitrust unit.
Visa allegedly used its dominant market position to penalize customers and merchants who use competing payment processors, according to court papers.
Regarding Visa, well, that’s as may be — there are alternatives (MasterCard is still around, and there are any number of prepaid cards out there) but that’s not really the point here. The point is this: How did Paul Pelosi know when to bail? Because it sure as shootin’ looks like he was tipped off. Paul Pelosi may be a shady character in any number of ways, but he’s no dummy; some forewarning on a suit like this would certainly indicate to him that it’s time to dump his Visa stock.
And dump it he did.
Meanwhile, Christopher Josephs, the tech entrepreneur who runs the “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker” on X, posted a screenshot of a congressional filing on July 3 which showed that the former House speaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi, had sold 2,000 shares of Visa worth between $500,000 and $1 million.
The disclosure form shows that Pelosi’s transaction is marked “SP,” or spouse — a reference to husband Paul, the San Francisco-based venture capitalist and real estate investor.
At the time Paul Pelosi sold Visa stock, there was no public indication that an antitrust lawsuit against the company was imminent.
Shares of Visa closed down 5.5% at $272.78.
There was no public indication that an antitrust lawsuit against the company was imminent. No public indication.
Yeah. And amazingly, Paul Pelosi got out before the lawsuit and before Visa’s stock shares started a downward plunge that is likely to continue.
Does anyone doubt for a moment that Nancy Pelosi, one of the most influential Democrats in Washington, probably has contacts in the Justice Department? Does anyone doubt that, given the Pelosi family’s amazing, nay, astounding success in stock trading, they are routinely privy to information not available to the general public?
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Nancy Pelosi, we should remember, handed over the gavel in 2023, stepping down as Speaker of the House of Representatives, although she retains her Bay-Area House seat that would elect a stuffed armadillo if it had a D after its name. But instead of the mythical Shelly McShellface, CA’s 11th Congressional District is still represented by this woman whose net worth when she handed over the Speaker’s gavel was estimated at $171.4 million. Granted, Nancy was born into a pretty well-off (East Coast) family, but she’s certainly done well for herself all the same — probably from the same staggering run of coincidence in stock trading that enabled her husband to sell off his Visa stock in the nick of time.
Ever wondered how these people get so stinking rich while they/their family members are in Congress? Well, this appears to be how they do it. Insider trading and graft.
