(Headline USA) Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., reportedly failed to comply with requirements to disclose his children’s stock portfolios despite supporting legislation that would ban lawmakers and their families from owning stocks.
Senate ethics rules require senators to annually report “assets, transactions, gifts, travel reimbursements, and liabilities” received by their dependent children. Fetterman has been serving in the Senate since 2023 after winning his election in 2022, but disclosed his children’s stock portfolios for the first time this week, according to the Washington Free Beacon. He also amended disclosures he submitted as a Senate candidate in 2021 and 2022 to reflect these portfolios.
The disclosure reveals Fetterman’s three minor children own between $45,000 to $675,000 in stocks and between $53,000 and $445,000 in corporate bonds. The stocks and bonds are held in major banks such as Citigroup and J.P. Morgan.
In his filings as a Senate candidate, Fetterman did not include these holdings, and only listed that his children had between $600,000 and $1.25 million in checking accounts under their names.
The disclosure calls into question Fetterman’s past commitment to the ETHICS Act, which would ban lawmakers, their spouses, and their dependent children from owning or trading corporate securities. Under the bill, lawmakers’ dependent children would be permitted to own only $10,000 total in securities.
In other words, if the ETHICS Act were passed, Fetterman would need to divest his children’s sizable stock portfolios.
In a statement, his office claimed Fetterman did not initially report his children’s stock assets because those investments were “created by generous grandparents who were unaware of the reporting requirements.” His office did not, however, clarify whether Fetterman would be divesting those investments as part of his push for the ETHICS Act.
The Fetterman family’s investments also undermine the senator’s argument that lawmakers should not “profit off the same companies that they are regulating” — a comment he made just last year. As a member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Fetterman helps regulate banks such as Citigroup and J.P. Morgan, where most of his children’s assets are held.
