últimas notícias

Ms. Pelosi was less effusive, telling reporters at her weekly news conference that she would accept such a ban, but with a complicating twist. She said she wanted any stock limitations, including a toughening of existing disclosure rules on stock ownership and trading that now apply to members of Congress and the executive branch, to also apply to the judicial branch of government, especially the Supreme Court.

The judiciary branch does have ethics rules that oblige some disclosure, in some cases more quickly and more often than the congressional branch. But an investigation last month by The Wall Street Journal found hundreds of instances in which federal judges presided over cases involving companies in which they or their family members owned stock.

“It has to be governmentwide,” she said, adding, “the judiciary has no reporting. The Supreme Court has no disclosure. It has no reporting of stock transactions, and it makes important decisions every day.”

Multiple proposals for a trading ban already exist in the House and Senate, including a new bill unveiled this week by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Steve Daines, Republican of Montana. One proposal by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Representative Katie Porter, Democrat of California, reintroduced on Wednesday, would ban individual stock trading and extend financial disclosure rules to both the judiciary and the Federal Reserve Board.

The speaker’s caveats angered some of the strongest proponents of fast action to ban congressional stock ownership, who saw them as a veiled attempt to ground the effort. For all the merits of applying disclosure rules to the judiciary, they argued, such legislation would spark debate on the constitutional separation of powers and the rights of Congress to dictate to the judicial branch.