Senate’s ‘Crypto Queen’ Immediately Objects as Jon Ossoff Proposes Trading Ban

Capitol Hill’s “Crypto Queen,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), immediately objected to Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) proposed bill to ban Senators from trading stocks.

If passed, the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act would prohibit members of Congress and their families from buying or selling individual stocks or cryptocurrency, and require them to divest their holdings or place them in a qualified blind trust.

“We could go to any town, any county in Georgia, and ask anybody of either political party or no political party, should members of Congress be playing the stock market while we make legislation? And, overwhelmingly, the answer would be no,” Ossoff said as part of his remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday.

He continued, “The American people want members of Congress to stop trading stocks. The American people are sick and tired of this corruption. In fact, this may be one of the most unifying issues in our deeply divided country. So, let’s take action right now, today. We can pass this resolution. It is very simple. It says that starting January 1 of the new year, no U.S. Senator can trade stocks or cryptocurrency.”

Once given the opportunity, Lummis immediately offered up her objection. Back in 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported Lummis was the “most heavily invested” U.S. lawmaker in bitcoin, with roughly $250,000 of the digital asset.

“Reserving the right to object, I would be completely unaffected by the bill the gentleman from Georgia is proposing because I won’t be here next year,” Lummis, who is retiring after just one term, said. “But I reserve the right to object because there are alternatives. For example, when I arrived here, I was placed on the Banking Committee, and the Banking Committee has issues that might conflict with my financial assets, so I put my meager, stress on meager, financial assets in a blind trust.”

She continued, arguing that blind trusts are “sufficient to ensure conflicts of interest are appropriately mitigated”:

That blind trust was approved by the Senate Ethics Committee. … I don’t know whether the investments I placed in that blind trust are still there. I don’t know whether they sold some and traded them for better investments. I won’t find out until next January when I leave here and get my assets out of the blind trust and see what’s left. In other words, there are ways to avoid conflicts of interest in the committees on which we work. There are also many restrictions on what members of Congress can do and not do when they’re in office.

Watch above via Forbes Breaking News.

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