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Kelley Paul buys stock in Gilead

Kelley Paul is wife of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Experts in corporate and securities law said the investment, and especially the delayed reporting of it, undermined trust in government and raised questions about whether the Kentucky Republican’s family had sought to profit from nonpublic information about the looming health emergency and plans by the U.S. government to combat it.

…

Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, said the senator completed a reporting form for his wife’s investment last year but learned only recently, while preparing an annual disclosure, that the form had not been transmitted. He sought guidance from the Senate Ethics Committee, she said, and filed the supplemental report Wednesday along with the annual disclosure, which was due in May and submitted three months late.

She also said Paul’s wife, Kelley, an author and former communications consultant, lost money on the investment, which she made with her own earnings. The purchase was of between $1,000 and $15,000 of stock in Gilead, which makes the antiviral drug known as remdesivir. The company’s stock was worth $74.70 per share on the day of the purchase and rose above $80 in March. It has since fluctuated and was worth $69.84 on the day of Paul’s disclosure more than a year later.

— Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post

The purchase came early in the novel coronavirus’ initial wave through the United States — and one day after the first U.S. clinical trial began for Gilead’s remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19, according to records reviewed by CNBC.

— CNBC

It’s not simply that the timing of the purchase is oddly coincidental — neither Paul (R-Ky.) nor his wife, Kelley, had bought an individual stock in at least a decade. The scandal is that members of Congress and their immediate families are allowed to dabble in individual equities, period.

As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who is co-sponsoring legislation that would ban all members of Congress and their senior staff from holding individual stocks — tweeted: “It shouldn’t be legal.”

— Helaine Olen, The Washington Post

The coronavirus pandemic brought congressional stock trading activity into sharp focus when a number of lawmakers came under fire for dropping stocks from their portfolios ahead of the massive stock market selloff that came on the heels of the worsening pandemic.

— CNN

Yet the $1,001 to $15,000 invested by [Kelley Paul] is also miniscule compared to some other lawmakers, who have bought or sold hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars worth of stock during the pandemic. (Congressional financial disclosures give dollar ranges for the value of assets, not specific dollar figures.)

The Associated Press previously reported that Democratic Representative Tom Malinowski of New Jersey repeatedly failed to disclose trades worth as much as $1 million in medical and tech companies that had a stake in the virus response.

— Newsweek

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