Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert failed to file her “periodic transactions report” on time for investments made in 2021, as per her financial statement filed last week.
The U.S. House of Representatives requires any trade made by representatives, a spouse, or a dependent child to be reported within 45 days under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, commonly called the STOCK Act.
The STOCK Act allows reporting of financial transactions in ranges instead of figures. Instead of giving a figure like $6,000 invested in NVDA, representatives simply need to report a range, like $1,000 to $15,000 invested in NVDA. Failure to do so attracts a fine of $200.
In her 2021 filing, Boebert disclosed assets worth between $5,000 and $80,000 in stocks, cryptocurrencies, and asset funds in her financial statement.
Furthermore, these investments were routed through accounts owned by her husband, Jayson Boebert.
Using the popular investment app Robinhood, Jayson Boebert made eight cryptocurrency transactions ranging between $1,001 and $15,000. These transactions happened between May 5 and May 7, 2021.
Of the eight transactions, four were purchases, and four were sales, but none resulted in more than $200 in profits per the filing.
Despite the minimal gains, Lauren Boebert failed to report these transactions.
The U.S. representative didn’t respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
“There’s a huge red flag that all these assets were obtained in one year, but no reporting on it,” Kedric Payne, vice president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former deputy chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics, told Colorado Sun.
Payne also called the U.S. representative’s failure to report on transactions “disturbing.”
According to Payne, complaints about late or incorrect financial reporting investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics were rarely considered by the House Ethics Committee.
“The Office of Congressional Ethics did investigate multiple members for violating the STOCK Act, but then the committee on ethics dismissed those cases,” Payne told Colorado Sun.
Politicians eye crypto investments
Boebert isn’t the only U.S. Representative dabbling in crypto. Indeed, nine different representatives have reported trading cryptocurrencies in their financial disclosures since 2020.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, reported purchases of between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of Bitcoin on January 25, 2022.
Pat Toomey, a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, made investments in Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETH) and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (BTC) in June 2021.
Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, reportedly invested between $50,001 and $100,000 in Bitcoin on August 16, 2021.
Lummis is also working on a bipartisan bill with Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand that would see cryptocurrencies fall under the regulatory purview of the CFTC rather than the SEC. A summary of the bill circulated by Senators Lummis and Gillibrand explains that it “grants the CFTC exclusive spot market jurisdiction over all fungible digital assets which are not securities, including ancillary assets.”
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