'Egregious': GOP congressman quietly sold $50k in Boeing stock — before a 'damning' report came out

13 December 2023

In a September 2020 report, the House Transportation Committee found that Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) "played instrumental and causative roles" in two deadly plane crashes that, combined, killed 346 people altogether.

Before that, according to Daily Beast reporters Roger Sollenberger and Riley Rogerson, Rep. Mike Garcia (R-California) "sold up to $50,000 in" Boeing shares. That August 2020 sale, the journalists report in an article published on December 13, came "weeks before" the "damning results of" a congressional probe "into deadly crashes involving the company's 737 Max airliner" became public.

"But while other incumbent campaigns were dogged by blockbuster stock scandals that year," Sollenberger and Rogerson report, "the Garcia campaign never had to answer for this trade. That's because Garcia blew the mandated deadline to report the transaction, only filing the paperwork on November 23 — more than two months after the 45-day reporting window had closed."

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The Beast reporters continue, "When he finally did disclose the sale, it was two weeks after the 2020 general election votes were cast, and three days after Garcia declared victory. He won by 333 votes."

In a once-red state that has become increasingly Democratic in recent decades, Garcia has defeated Democrat Christy Smith (who formerly served in the California State Assembly) three times — first in a special election in May 2020, then in the general elections of 2020 and 2022.

The Daily Beast interviewed some legal experts, who, according to Sollenberger and Rogerson, described the delay as an "egregious" ethics violation.

The Campaign Legal Center's Delaney Marsco told the Beast, "When members file late, this is the cost: It deprives voters of the information to assess it themselves."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Communications Director Jordan Libowitz told the Beast that Garcia failed to report the trade "at a time when people would have been asking questions about it" — adding, "There’s a chance he's in Congress today because he hid this. And it raises the question of whether he's looking out for his constituents or is he just trying to enrich himself."

Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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