Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sold off approximately $5 million worth of shares in chipmaker Nvidia on Tuesday ahead of a Senate vote on a bill that would boost the domestic chip manufacturing industry.
Pelosi sold 25,000 shares for roughly $4.1 million and took a loss of $341,365, according to a period transaction report.
“The sale comes a month after a June 17 filing revealed Pelosi exercised call options to buy 20,000 Nvidia shares, purchasing the options as well as 5,000 shares outright last summer,” Forbes reports.
The couple faced intense scrutiny over the stock purchase but Pelosi’s spokesman Drew Hammill reiterated in a statement to The Hill that the speaker’s husband “bought options to buy stock in this company more than a year ago and exercised them on June 17, 2022.”
He added: “As always, he does not discuss these matters with the Speaker until trades have been made and required disclosures must be prepared and filed. Mr. Pelosi decided to sell the shares at a loss rather than allow the misinformation in the press regarding this trade to continue.”
Unusual Whales, a platform for "retail tooling in options, equities, and crypto markets," noticed something "unusual" about their efforts to be transparent.
Biden: Pelosi will get the CHIPS+ Bill passed today.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 28, 2022
Note, she and her husband sold all their Nvidia, $NVDA, yesterday. It was also the FIRST time they had both filed and reveal the transaction on the same day, one day before the vote.
Unusual.
Speaking about that observation, Fox News's Jessie Watters added:
"It was the first time the Pelosis had both filed and revealed the transaction on the same day, two days before the vote and the bill being passed. The House voted on the CHIPS Act today. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the Pelosis unprecedented act of transparency. But we know what happened. Nancy and Paulie P. realized the block was a little hot and if they didn’t unload that stock before the bill passed they were going to be in a heap of trouble."
The legislation, which passed the House and Senate, has been sent to President Biden's desk.