Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi’s (CA.) decision to sell her Google stocks about a month before the tech giant was hit with a massive anti-trust lawsuit has many speculating she used proprietary information from her position in Congress to trade.
The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday (January 24) it would be suing the tech giant for its abuse of the monopoly it holds on a large swath of online advertising tools.
The DOJ asserted that by doing what it was, Google had corrupted “legitimate competition in the ad tech industry.”
After the Justice Department made the announcement, eagle-eyed social media users pointed out that four weeks before — on December 20, 21, and 28 — Pelosi sold up to $3 million in stocks of Alphabet Inc., the holding company that owns Google.
The disclosure from which social media users gleaned the information showed each transaction Pelosi made selling the stocks ranged from $50,001 to $1 million.
Pelosi’s critics were quick to draw a line between the former House Speaker’s sale and the lawsuit the DOJ filed against Google on Tuesday.
Most of the former House Speaker’s detractors queried the move, wondering if Pelosi’s decision amounts to insider trading.
One Twitter user facetiously asserted Pelosi’s decision to sell the stocks four weeks before the DOJ’s anti-trust lawsuit was merely a coincidence.
James Bradley, a former Republican Senate candidate, claimed there wasn’t any need to be a “conspiracy theorist” to question how Pelosi would have known to sell the stocks four weeks before the DOJ’s lawsuit.
