Louisiana U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields is facing allegations of insider trading. The news website NOTUS reports the Democrat bought a large amount of Oracle stock days before President Trump signed an executive order that gave the technology giant a leading role in TikTok’s pending U.S. spinoff from a Chinese company.
Fields denies he had any inside knowledge.
“There’s not a single stock that I’ve purchased because I had some inside information. And I’ve been doing this for years,” Fields said.
Fields says members of Congress trade stocks all the time, and he’s no different. In fact, he’s been doing so for a long time.
“I’ve been trading stocks for a while, and it didn’t start when I was in Congress. And I don’t intend to stop while I’m at Congress,” Fields stated.
Fields notes that there are very strict rules for members of Congress to report their stock trades – they have to do so within 45 days. Fields says he takes it one step further – he reports all of his trades within 30 days.
“At the end of each month, I make sure that my lawyers send it over to Ethics (U.S. House Committee on Ethics) to make sure that I’m not in any violation of the law,” Fields explained.
Fields is a member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, which oversees the financial markets and securities industry. NOTUS says it’s unclear what, if anything, Fields knew about Oracle’s involvement in the TikTok deal, or whether Fields initiated the trade himself or if a financial adviser did so on his behalf.