The chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee appears to have violated federal law in a serious manner, but she is unlikely to be punished severely.

Fox News reported on Tuesday that Washington Representative Suzan DelBene, who heads the DCCC, failed to disclose up to $5.5 million in stock sales within the federally mandated time frame.

In addition, the disclosures occurred well after the deadline had passed.

DelBene reported in a June 14 filing that she and her spouse had sold Microsoft stock in two separate transactions on August 30, 2022, and March 1, 2023.

According to the report, the value of the stock sale was between $1.25 million and $5.50 million; members of Congress are not compelled by law to disclose exact figures.

Under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, members of Congress are required to disclose securities purchases or sales no later than 45 days after they or their spouse make them.

Let me assure those of you with a Common Core math education that in neither instance did DelBene meet the deadline. The transaction on March 1 was reported 105 days after it occurred, while the transaction in August 2022 was reported 288 days after it occurred.

“Members of Congress from both parties are missing these deadlines and not disclosing transactions when they’re supposed to according to the law, which in and of itself, from a first principle standpoint, is a really bad thing because you have lawmakers who are not following the law that they made,” Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the government affairs manager at the Project on Government Oversight, told Fox News.

“Oftentimes, if you aggregate members of Congress’ trades and transactions, they tend to over-perform the rest of us and over-perform the market,” he added.

“There is definitely the appearance of impropriety and the appearance of potential corruption there that is corrosive to public trust in Congress and individual members of Congress. So, it’s a big problem,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to pose a problem for DelBene or any other member of Congress who violates the law.

Business Insider disclosed in January that 78 members of Congress had violated the STOCK Act.

What transpired with them? hardly anything.

“While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount — or waived by House or Senate ethics officials. Ethics watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks,” the report said.

“On Capitol Hill, lawmakers seriously debated such a ban, with a vote on a consensus bill seemingly imminent during early autumn. But Democrats, who enjoyed majorities in the House and Senate through January 2023, did not press legislation forward, and a bill to ban lawmakers from trading stocks ultimately died.”

More on this story via The Western Journal:

In other words, the STOCK Act supplies yet more proof that Congress likes enacting legislation with too-cute acronyms much more than solving the problem that legislation was designed to address. CONTINUE READING…