NY Rep. Tom Suozzi violated law by not disclosing stock transactions until years past

According to a review of congressional financial disclosures, Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who is currently running for the governor of New York, was found to be in violation of a federal conflict-of-interest law.

Suozzi apparently failed to report 31 stock trades, which when taken together are worth as much as $885,000.

The trades were reported months or even years late, as noted by the financial disclosures. Suozzi made one particular stock purchase, in aluminum manufacturer Superior Industries International, Inc., on September 5. 2017, but he did not report the trade until March 3, 2022.

Suozzi was required to report the trades publicly 45 days after they happened under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, also known as the STOCK Act, which was passed in 2012.

According to the March 3 report, the most recent of the 31 trades to which Suozzi admitted came in June 2021 and was a purchase of between $15,001 and $50,000 in General Electric stock. Other trades that were noted late included those in stock of Apple, IBM, Citigroup, Cisco Systems, Verizon Communications, Boeing, BlackRock, Altria Group, and Caterpillar.

The new disclosures come at a time during which the House is preparing to conduct a hearing on whether to amend the STOCK Act. Lawmakers are expected to consider: banning members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stock and strengthening up the rules governing the personal finances of elected officials. 

Suozzi has come under fire before for his stock trades. Last year, the nonpartisan group Campaign Legal Center filed an ethics complaint against him, saying he failed to report around 300 trades properly.

Senior legal counsel on ethics for the group, Delany Marsco, said it was impossible to know if the representative’s latest filing included any of the missing trades her organization noted in its complaint.

“Unless we get more disclosure from the representative it’s very hard to know,” she said. “It deprives voters of information they have had a right to for years and haven’t had.”