- Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee was late to report a stock purchase worth up to $250,000.
- It comes as Congress is debating whether to ban lawmakers and their spouses from trading stocks.
- 67 members of Congress have since 2021 been found in violation of the STOCK Act.
Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee's 7th Congressional District has violated a federal conflict-of-interest law by waiting too long to disclose a personal stock trade, according to an Insider review of Green's latest financial disclosure.
Green purchased between $100,000 and $250,000 of stock in NGL Energy Partners, a midstream oil and gas service provider to producers and end users, on June 2. But he waited until August 1 to disclose it in a certified congressional document.
Members of Congress are required to report such trades no later than 45 days after making them, according to the federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012. Lawmakers are not required to provide the specific value of their trades, and instead, report them in broad ranges.
Since 2021, Insider's "Conflicted Congress" project and other publications have uncovered 67 lawmakers, now including Green, who have violated the STOCK Act by disclosing their trades late. Insider additionally found at least 182 senior congressional staffers who also violated provisions of the STOCK Act.
"Congressman Green unfortunately missed a notice from his broker about the June 2 trade, so [he] filed it 15 days late when he went to file the other recent trades," Green spokesperson Rebecca Galfano said in an email to Insider. "Congressman Green has no insight into how trades are made, and is only notified after they occur. In fact, in his first year in Congress, to go above and beyond even the hint of impropriety, he instructed his broker in writing to manage his family's investments and to disregard any instructions from him should he have tried to provide input (which he has not)."
Green "believes firmly that using insider information for personal benefit is a crime that should be strictly enforced," Galfano said.
And while Green has not yet been contacted by the House Ethics Committee about any infraction, he "will do whatever the committee requires," she added.
Earlier this year, Green began focusing more on energy independence in the United States, tweeting about it several times in early March.
"Say it with me: American. Energy. Independence. NOW!" he wrote on March 1.
"The U.S. must become energy independent," Green tweeted again on March 1. "We cannot rely on Russian oil when we have the ability to produce it safely and sustainably back home.
"Energy independence is national security," Green tweeted, two days after his previous tweets. "Period."
Later in March, Green introduced a bill to ban the United States from buying oil from Venezuela, Russia, and Iran, and he noted in a press release, again, that it was time for America to "become energy independent."
Green reported selling his shares of another company, Energy Transfer LP in June and July. He reported that they were cumulatively worth up to $215,000. The Energy Transfer sales were reported on time and did not violate the STOCK Act's disclosure provision.
A ban on congressional stock trading?
As Green continues to make stock trades, members of Congress are debating whether they and their spouses should even be allowed to trade individual stocks.
House Democrats are planning the imminent introduction of consensus legislation to ban congressional stock trading. But disagreements over what, exactly, should appear in that bill remain, and a working group of US senators may have their own ideas.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, meanwhile, told Fox Business that she would hold a vote on a bill sometime in September to ban members of Congress from trading, though the speaker has not always been on board with the idea.
When asked in late 2021, Pelosi pushed back against the idea of a trading ban, saying "We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that."
She later acquiesced after facing sharp criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the government affairs manager at the Project on Government Oversight, told Insider that the STOCK Act was "clearly not enough" to prevent conflicts of interest and that more government reform is necessary, and that serving as a member of Congress is not compulsory.
"We've been running this experiment now for 10 years since the STOCK Act was passed back in 2012, and it's clearly not enough," Hedtler-Gaudette said. "I think we need to go beyond reporting and disclosure around transactions and we need to have some actual restrictions and prohibitions. The good news is that if that kind of restriction or prohibition is too onerous for people, they always have the option of not being a member of Congress."