During a debate on Sunday, Republican New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli took a jab at Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), the Democrat gubernatorial candidate, for stock trading.
During the debate, when asked a question about if he was “willing to commit to not raise the sales tax,” Ciattarelli said if elected governor, his administration was “not raising the sales tax.” Ciattarelli explained that the income tax and property tax in the state needed to be lowered and questioned if anyone’s life is “better off than it was eight years ago.”
Sherrill responded by stating that she wasn’t going to “commit to anything right now,” and criticized Ciattarelli for “raising taxes” for years on residents in the state.
“I’m going to be fiscally responsible with your money. I’m going to drive down your cost at every level. And, I’m going to make sure your kids have great opportunities here in the state of New Jersey,” Sherrill said.
After Ciattarrelli pointed out that he had “term-limited” himself every single time he had been in office and that “at the municipal and county level” he did not “take the salary or the benefits,” Sherrill went on claim that Ciattarelli was revising history and vowed that when elected governor she would “make sure that he doesn’t get to serve again.”
“There’s another big difference between her public service, and my public service. It actually cost me money the time I put in, and took away from my company,” Ciattarelli added. “In the seven years that she’s been in Congress, she’s tripled her net worth. There’s another big difference between the two of us, she broke the law. She had to pay fines for violating federal law on stock trades and stock reporting, and the New York Times reports that while you’re sitting on the House Armed Services Committee, you were trading defense stocks.”
Ciattarelli’s comments come after a New York Times report from September 2022, revealed that Sherrill “reported both buying and selling shares of several defense contractors while she was a member of the House Armed Services Committee”:
Ms. Sherill reported both buying and selling shares of several defense contractors while she was a member of the House Armed Services Committee. She also sold shares of Alphabet and Meta in 2019 while she was the chairwoman of the oversight subcommittee of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, which has held hearings about online disinformation.
Business Insider reported in December 2021, that Sherrill had “failed to properly disclose up to $350,000 in stock sales,” and ended up paying a late fee:
Federally required disclosure documents show that Sherrill’s husband, Jason Hedberg, sold between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of stock in financial services company UBS in April. He then sold between $50,001 to $100,000 worth of USB stocks in June.
Sherrill reported the transactions on December 3, months beyond the 45 day-deadline for such trades. The documents in question are known as periodic transaction reports, or PTRs.
Sherrill is the 48th member of Congress Insider and other news organizations have this year identified as failing to properly disclose their stock transactions as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act.
During an interview on The Breakfast Club podcast, Sherrill was asked about a report from Newsmax which shared that Sherrill had made at least $7 million in stock trading, Sherrill described Newsmax as a “very questionable organization.” Sherrill continued to state that she would “have to go see what that was alluding to.”
Breitbart News has previously reported that during an interview with Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow in May, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) revealed that he had reintroduced the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act. The PELOSI Act would prevent members of Congress and their family members from trading or holding stocks.
