WASHINGTON — When Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) offered a piece of his private inventory holdings two days earlier than President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff bulletins in April, the transaction gave the impression to be yet one more routine monetary transfer for somebody Congress itself as soon as investigated for his usually opaque buying and selling habits.
However Suozzi’s March 31 sale of as much as $50,000 price of World Industrial Co. inventory is notable for what it’s not: The congressman has by no means publicly disclosed proudly owning the inventory, prompting the query of how a federal lawmaker can promote a safety he doesn’t seem to personal within the first place.
The reply? Suozzi merely didn’t disclose his World Industrial Co. inventory, which he obtained greater than two years in the past, due to an obvious loophole in federal legislation—a loophole not too long ago closed by Congress to deal with inventory conditions exactly like Suozzi’s, based on a Fortune evaluation of federal paperwork and interviews with authorities officers.
Suozzi’s mysterious inventory commerce comes at a time when a bipartisan coalition in Congress are agitating to ban federal lawmakers from buying and selling shares altogether. They cite what they regard as abuses of a monetary disclosure legislation often called the Cease Buying and selling on Congressional Information Act. Suozzi has violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provision on 4 totally different events earlier this decade, based on media studies.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and even President Donald Trump have provided assist, in precept, for a congressional stock-trade ban.
Suozzi’s congressional workplace informed Fortune the congressman has finished nothing unsuitable by not but reporting his World Industrial Co. inventory possession, arguing that he adopted congressional guidelines that utilized to him when he final filed necessary private monetary disclosures in 2024.
“Congressman Suozzi has complied fully with the principles of Home Ethics,” Suozzi Chief of Employees Matt Fried informed Fortune.
Suozzi’s newest inventory saga started in June 2023.
That month, based on Securities and Trade Fee data, Suozzi obtained $50,000 price of restricted, unvested inventory in World Industrial Co., whereas serving as a “non-management director” of the corporate after leaving Congress earlier that yr following a failed marketing campaign for governor of New York.
Later that yr, Suozzi determined to run in a particular election for New York’s third Congressional District seat, which Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) vacated after the Home of Representatives expelled him amid a swathe of federal felony expenses on which he was later csentenced to greater than seven years in prisononvicted.
When Suozzi filed a compulsory candidate monetary disclosure report on January 12, 2024, he didn’t disclose his inventory in World Industries Co. The corporate markets industrial and restore merchandise by way of numerous e-commerce web sites. Nor did he disclose it in two subsequent monetary disclosures, in August and September of 2024, after he received his congressional seat in February 2024. The three monetary disclosures utilized to Suozzi’s private monetary exercise throughout 2023.
Fried defined that Suozzi’s World Industries Co. inventory “had not vested and had no worth” when Suozzi filed his private monetary disclosure in January 2024. As a result of Home Committee on Ethics monetary disclosure guidelines on the time didn’t particularly deal with unvested inventory holdings, Suozzi didn’t disclose his World Industries Co. inventory holding, Fried mentioned.
Nonetheless, Suozzi’s World Industries Co. inventory did vest sooner or later between Suozzi’s monetary disclosure on Jan. 12, 2024, and his swearing-in to Congress on Feb. 28, 2024, Fried mentioned.
The World Industries Co. inventory “might be mirrored” when Suozzi discloses his 2024 private monetary exercise in a doc that should be filed by August 2025, Fried mentioned. In Might, Suozzi requested, and obtained, a 90-day extension to file it., Fried mentioned.
When the Home Committee on Ethics launched up to date disclosure guidelines earlier this yr, it included new language immediately addressing the type of state of affairs Suozzi finds himself in, though it doesn’t seem to use to members of Congress retroactively.
“You’re required to reveal for your self, your partner, or dependent kids your participation in a restricted inventory plan if the worth of inventory was greater than $1,000 on the finish of the reporting interval or earned greater than $200 in revenue throughout the reporting interval,” the Home steering reads. “Present the title of the unvested inventory (vested inventory needs to be disclosed on a separate line merchandise), worth, kind of revenue and quantity.”
Tom Rust, chief counsel for the Home Committee on Ethics, declined to remark.
“These disclosure necessities are essential as a result of they’re the one form of moral obligation members of Congress have been prepared to impose on themselves,” mentioned Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Workplace of Authorities Ethics. “In the event that they’d lastly move the long-languishing inventory buying and selling ban to uphold the bedrock moral precept of avoiding conflicts of curiosity, they wouldn’t have to fret about these disclosures.”
In 2021, NPR reported — citing analysis from the Marketing campaign Authorized Heart, a nonpartisan watchdog group — that Suozzi didn’t correctly disclose about 300 monetary transactions.
Individually, Enterprise Insider reported that Suozzi — on three totally different events in March, Might and December of 2022 — violated the STOCK Act by ready months or years previous a federal deadline to reveal dozens of further inventory trades.
“Fairly frankly, we now have so much occurring in Congress. I’ve loads of different stuff occurring. And it’s simply not—ethics is a giant precedence for me. However the—a number of the formalities will not be essentially one thing I make a precedence of,” Suozzi informed the unbiased Workplace of Congressional Ethics in 2022 throughout its investigation of his inventory buying and selling practices, whereas noting a monetary adviser directed his trades.
The Workplace of Congressional Ethics’s board unanimously referred Suozzi to the Home Committee on Ethics, writing that there was “substantial cause to consider” Suozzi had didn’t correctly disclose a whole bunch of private inventory trades.
However the Home Committee on Ethics, which members of Congress themselves represent, unanimously concluded in July 2022 that there “was not clear proof” that Suozzi dedicated a “realizing or willful” violation of the STOCK Act. The committee declined to penalize him.
In his second stint as a congressman, Suozzi is a member of the Home Committee on Methods and Means, which is liable for tax-writing, revenue-raising and different core authorities monetary features. He sits on the committee’s oversight and tax subcommittees, as properly.
Fried, Suozzi’s chief of employees, mentioned Suozzi backs the Bipartisan Restoring Religion in Authorities Act of 2025, certainly one of a number of pending payments that, if handed, would ban or in any other case restrict members of Congress from buying and selling particular person shares.
On Might 5, Suozzi grew to become a co-sponsor of the invoice, which can also be sponsored by 10 different ideologically numerous lawmakers starting from Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
When Suozzi offered his World Industrial Co. inventory on March 31, it was buying and selling round $22 per share — down from about $27 a share when he obtained it in June 2023.
It’s the one inventory commerce Suozzi has reported making this yr after reporting making only a handful final yr.
“The congressman has made a degree of not shopping for or promoting inventory since his new time period started in January,” Fried mentioned. “This was his solely commerce. It was finished to boost cash to pay charges to his monetary adviser. This inventory was offered as a result of it was the one inventory during which he had no capital good points.”
Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist. Dave beforehand labored as editor-in-chief of Uncooked Story, deputy editor at Enterprise Insider and as an editor or reporter on the Heart for Public Integrity, Politico, OpenSecrets and the Dallas Morning Information. He has additionally written for The Atlantic, TIME, Rolling Stone, Columbia Journalism Overview, the Every day Beast, NOTUS and The Ankler.
