Pelosi's husband bought Tesla stock weeks before Biden rolled out electric vehicle plan

WASHINGTON (SBG) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's wealthy husband bought up to $1 million in Tesla stock in December, disclosure forms show.

The California Democrat's husband, Paul Pelosi, purchased 25 call options of the highly valued electric vehicle company weeks before President Joe Biden announced plans to replace the entire federal automobile fleet with electric vehicles, the document shows. Biden, who rolled out the plan last week, has not explicitly stated whether all the cars in the federal fleet would be Teslas.

Mr. Pelosi runs a venture capital investment and consulting firm based in San Francisco. There is no indication Pelosi or her husband had foreknowledge of the president's plan.

The Pelosis also disclosed buying 20,000 shares of AllianceBernstein Holdings, 100 calls of Apple, and 100 calls of Walt Disney.

Tesla shares are hovering around $832 apiece as of Monday afternoon, putting them above the strike price, or “in-the-money," Fox Business reported in January. Mr. Pelosi can exercise his shares so long as they remain above $500. Tesla shares have jumped from $640.34 at the time of Mr. Pelosi's calls to the current price.

"The disclosure forms clearly indicate these investments were made by Mr. Paul Pelosi not the Speaker," a spokesman for Speaker Pelosi's office told FOX Business in a statement in January. The financial documents indicate that the stocks were made by "SP," meaning a spouse made the purchases. Pelosi did not appear to break any laws, as the type of purchase he made occur frequently.

Mr. Pelosi is legally allowed to make such buys because spouses of lawmakers can own shares of companies in industries where their husbands or wives may help regulate, but there's a catch. Under the STOCK Act, neither lawmakers nor their significant others can act on nonpublic information.

The STOCK Act was signed into law in 2012 and is designed to combat insider trading.

Biden has made pursuing ambitious solutions to climate a major priority of his young administration. Part of his plan is to give American consumers incentives to buy electric vehicles, which use electricity instead of gas. Tesla depends on zero-emissions credits to other carmakers to make a profit.

Tesla's revenues show the company would have netted a loss for 2020 were it not for the $1.6billion in sales of regulatory zero-emission credit, reports show. Tesla hit the cap of 200,000 qualified plug-in electrics sold a couple of years ago, so customers who intend on buying a Tesla cannot take advantage of the $7,500 federal tax credit.

According to a March report from the Tax Policy Center, the president is planning to restore the full tax credit permanently for US-made electric vehicles, in addition to removing the per-manufacturer cap and targeting it to middle-income earners. Such a move could expand Tesla's business ventures.

Prosecutors opened an investigation into four Senators who themselves or their spouses sold investments right before the S&P 500 crashed 34% in February and March. The Department of Justice dropped probes into Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga or their spouses for transactions they made before the economy dropped amid the pandemic.

Loeffler and fellow Georgian Sen. David Perdue were criticized during their unsuccessful reelection bids for making sizable stock purchases. The New York Times reported in December that Perdue has been the most prolific stock trader in the Senate since coming to Congress more than six years ago.

Perdue reportedly bought stock in businesses that stood to benefit from a pandemic, such as Pfizer, which rolled out a COVID vaccine earlier this year. Loeffler and other senators attended a private briefing in spring about the coronavirus pandemic, The Washington Post reported in December. Loeffler's stock purchases came under scrutiny shortly afterward.

Loeffler told The Washington Post that an investment firm made her trades. An independent adviser made most of Perdue's investments, the former Georgia Republican lawmaker said.

Pelosi's office has not yet responded to Sinclair Broadcast Group's request for comment, nor has she laid out how her husband's purchases were different from those made by Loeffler or Perdue. We will update this post when we get a response.