Paul Pelosi dumped $500,000 in Visa stock months before DOJ sued company for antitrust violations

Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, sold more than $500,000 worth of Visa stock just three months before the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was suing the credit card company for alleged violation of antitrust laws, the New York Post reported.

The DOJ announced the lawsuit on Tuesday, charging Visa with creating and maintaining a monopoly in the debit card market. But before the lawsuit was filed, Christopher Josephs, the tech entrepreneur behind the Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker on X, posted a screenshot of a July 3 Congressional document showing Pelosi had sold 2,000 of his Visa shares with an estimated value of between $500,000 and $1million. The disclosure document noted that the sale originated with the “SP” or spouse of Nancy Pelosi. Paul Pelosi is an affluent real estate investor in San Francisco.

The site noted on Tuesday: "Stock down 4% on the news today. But to be fair, it's still up 5% since her sell on 7/1. We'll be keeping an eye on where it goes from here."

When Pelosi unloaded his Visa stock, there was no public knowledge that the DOJ was close to dropping charges on the credit card company. But since Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Tuesday, shares of Visa dropped by 5.5 percent to $272.78 a share.

Nancy Pelosi’s office has denied any suggestion of insider trading with a spokesperson telling the Post, “Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks, and she has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”

Despite the denial, many find it hard to believe that Nancy Pelosi’s attainment of high political office and continued influence in the Democratic Party has not provided her with a backchannel view of government decision-making pertinent to the fluctuations of the stock market.

“At various critical inflection points in history, members of our government have engaged in trading at a time which their conflicts are called into question,” Ron Geffner, a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney, told The Post.

But Geffner cautioned the public or media rushing to judgment. “Before public opinion judges Pelosi unfairly, it is important to determine who engaged in the transaction on her behalf as well as whether it was part of a broader change of her portfolio,” Geffner added. The July 3 disclosure also revealed that Paul Pelosi sold 2,500 shares of Tesla. At the same time, he bought up stock in Nvidia and Broadcom.

Since leaving the Speaker’s chair, Nancy Pelosi has remained a dominant Democratic insider who decided that President Joe Biden would not be the Democratic presidential candidate and would remove himself from the race. She also claimed that this resulted in an “open primary” that Vice President Kamala Harris “won.”

Pelosi has refused to support legislation that would prevent lawmakers and their spouses from stock trading, given the obvious possibility of insider trading occurring, the Post noted.