The House Committee on Ethics revealed on Monday that it was investigating Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas). The first-term lawmaker’s office said that the probe concerns Fallon’s failure to disclose some stock trades in a timely manner.
Between January and April 2021, Fallon made more than 90 stock trades, which were worth a total of at least $7 million. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, requires representatives to report their securities transactions to the House Clerk’s office within 45 days. Fallon reported his 90-plus transactions in mid-June, meaning some trades were not disclosed until five months after they occurred.
The following month, Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog, filed a complaint about Fallon’s report with the Office of Congressional Ethics, citing an article about the tardy disclosure published by Insider.
On Monday, nine months after the complaint was filed, the House ethics committee confirmed that, yes, it was investigating Fallon. What triggered the panel’s announcement is a rule stating that when the committee receives a referral from the Office of Congressional Ethics, it must either release OCE’s report or make a statement that it was received within 45 days. (The months-long process from filing a complaint to getting the committee’s response is pretty standard.)
The committee’s statement did not specify why it was investigating Fallon but his office said that the panel’s inquiry involves the stock trades. “When Congressman Fallon learned of the requirement to file periodic transaction reports for certain transactions, he spoke with the Ethics Committee,” a spokesperson for Fallon said in a statement. “He subsequently filed all required reports and chose to proactively pay the fines owed to the U.S. Treasury through the Legislative Resource Center.” Late filings are subject to fees of up to $200 per transaction.
Fallon’s spokesperson said the extension was “a matter of capacity” for the House Committee on Ethics. (Possibly related: The panel having to enforce the House’s mask mandates. “Quite honestly, we have spent way too much time over the last year having to be the mask police.” committee member Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) told the Washington Post recently.)
Similarly, the committee’s requirement to acknowledge an investigation within 45 days led to it disclosing its inquiries into Reps. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and John Rutherford (R-Fla.) earlier this month. (Rutherford is a member of the ethics panel.)
As the ethics committee’s statement notes, “the mere fact of a referral or an extension, and the mandatory disclosure of such an extension and the name of the subject of the matter, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the Committee.”
The ethics panel is required to announce any action it’s taking against Fallon by May 31.
