Ro Khanna is one of congress's top stock traders. Now he wants to ban the practice

Khanna made 4,750 stock trades in the past 12 month worth $103 million after receiving heat for potential conflicts of interest; Oakland's Ramachandran pushed for a OPD grant writer last June

Rep. Ro Khanna plans to introduce legislation that would ban members of Congress from making stock trades, along with 12-year congressional term limits.

D.C. NEWS

17TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

—BUY/SELL KHANNA’S IDEA—Exorbitant amounts of stock trades by members of Congress has been a focus of government transparency groups for several years and Rep. Ro Khanna has consistently been one of Congress’ top traders.

—Khanna’s stock trading has been a rather large pock on an otherwise clean three terms in Congress. So how does Khanna fix it? By using misdirection.

—Last week, Khanna announced that he plans to introduce legislation to prohibit members of Congress from stock trading while in office. But the proposed legislation has a few poison pills that make the bill highly unlikely to ever be approved by Congress.

—Among them is adding congressional term limits of 12 years to the bill, and 18 years for members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

—Khanna has made over 14,000 stock trades since late 2020, according to Capitol Trades, a website that tracks congressional stock trades. The volume of all his trades since late 2020 totals $263 million, according to the website.

—Khanna has repeatedly sidestepped the issue by saying the stock trades are made by his wife.

—Khanna’s most traded stock is Alphabet, Inc., which is headquartered in his district, Microsoft, and Bank of America.

—Nearly a year ago after a wide-ranging New York Times article detailed the ubiquity of congressional stock trading, Khanna said he supported a ban. The Times determined Khanna’s trades represented 149 potential conflicts of interest.

—However, Khanna made another 4,753 trades with a total volume of $103 million in just the past year.

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