In Congress, Republicans steer clear of investing in Trump Media or Tesla

• A review of financial disclosures from members of Congress by Fortune shows that not a single Republican House or Senate member has purchased stock in Trump Media & Technology Group or in any of the president’s three crypto projects. Only two have invested in Tesla, and none have private stakes in any of Elon Musk’s other companies.

Politically, Republicans in Congress can’t seem to get enough of what President Donald Trump and government slasher-in-chief Elon Musk have wrought.

But lawmaker enthusiasm doesn’t extend to investing their own money in businesses and cryptocurrencies backed by the pair of billionaires, according to a Fortune analysis of government financial disclosure records.

Since Trump’s election on November 5 last year, not a single Republican member of Congress has personally purchased stock in Trump Media & Technology Group, the Florida-based company behind Trump’s Truth Social platform, federal records available through early February indicate.

Nor has any lawmaker disclosed investing in any of Trump’s crypto-ventures, including World Liberty Financial, a Trump crypto banking project, and the $Trump and $Melania crypto meme coins. Both of those vehicles have shed significant value since Trump introduced them in the hours before his January 20 presidential inauguration.

Republican members of Congress, many of whom are active stock traders, are similarly avoiding Musk companies of late, despite Trump and Musk literally peddling Tesla vehicles earlier this month on White House grounds.

Just two lawmakers — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for herself and Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.) on behalf of his dependent child — have disclosed modest stock purchases in Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle and solar energy company, since Trump’s election. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, no member of Congress has disclosed making personal investments in any companies privately held by Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, including SpaceX, Starlink and social media platform X.

“Says a lot about what’s being sold — if they’re not investing, they don’t think it’s a good investment,” said former Rep. Zach Wamp, a Republican who served in Congress from 1995 to 2011 and is now a senior adviser at government reform group Issue One.

Members of Congress may have good reasons to not invest. It invites “conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety” by making such investments, said Michael Sury, an associate professor and managing director of the Center for Analytics and Transformative Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business.

“There are serious ethical implications when members of Congress personally trade in ventures tied to figures like President Trump or Mr. Musk,” Sury said.

Who’s buying Tesla?

Curiously, Democrats in Congress have recently shown more interest in Tesla shares than Republicans, despite their widespread misgivings about Musk’s efforts—via Trump’s newly constituted Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—to dismantle numerous federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Musk “basically bought himself the presidency of the United States. I have no doubt he is the one calling the shots,” Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.) said in a February 21 interview with Forbes. But four days later, Cisneros purchased between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of Tesla shares amid an extended slide of Tesla’s share price, which closed Friday at $248.71, down from an all-time high of $480 per share in December. (Lawmakers are only legally required to disclose the value of purchases and sales in broad ranges.)

“Unlike President Trump who just last week held an impromptu Tesla infomercial for Elon Musk on the White House lawn, Congressman Cisneros has never abused his official position to benefit a private entity,” Cisneros spokesperson Nic Jordan told Fortune. “Both before and after the stock transaction in question, Congressman Cisneros has repeatedly been critical of Elon Musk, and he will continue to speak out against him or anyone else who does not do right by the American people.”

On March 3, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) purchased between $65,000 and $150,000 worth of Tesla stock. Reached by phone, Gonzalez’s spokesman, Mauricio Armaza, declined to comment.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.)’s spouse purchased between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of Tesla stock right before Trump’s election, federal disclosures indicate. His wife also purchased up to $15,000 worth of Trump Media & Technology Group stock the day after Trump won election. But they quickly sold the shares, noting in a federal disclosure that the Trump media stock was “purchased without knowledge of filer or spouse” and “sold for a loss.”

McGarvey spokesperson Albert Fujii said the congressman and his wife have an “explicit agreement with their financial adviser that they will not direct, approve, or even have knowledge of any stock purchase or sale.” McGarvey has also since divested of all individual stocks, Fujii said.

Another Democrat, Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, has disclosed making several Tesla stock purchases and sales since Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Gottheimer spokesperson Tony Wen said that Gottheimer employs an investment manager who has “full investment discretion” without the congressman’s involvement. Gottheimer is also working with congressional ethics officials to officially create a “qualified blind trust” to further shield himself of knowledge about his own financial investments, Wen said, adding that the congressman supports all members of Congress doing the same.

Tesla’s price is tanking — and few lawmakers want the stock

Members of Congress are free to personally trade most any asset, but are required by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 to disclose any purchase, sale or exchange of individual stocks, bonds, commodities, futures, digital currencies and business investments in private companies.

Nevertheless, dozens of lawmakers have violated the act’s disclosure provisions with little penalty. Frustrated by the status quo, a bipartisan coalition of federal lawmakers have floated several proposals to go further. They’d like to ban themselves and their colleagues from trading individual stocks and cryptocurrency altogether, citing the potential for conflicts-of-interest and the specter of insider trading, given the amount of non-public information to which congressional members are privy.

While one such proposal advanced out of a Senate committee last congressional session, the full Congress has yet to vote on a stock trade-ban measure. 

That’s too bad, said Morris Pearl, a former managing director at asset management firm BlackRock and current chairman of Patriotic Millionaires, a government reform group.

“Members of Congress are in a situation of having a conflict of interest for any number of reasons, and they have access to confidential information and the ability to change government policies in ways that could be beneficial or detrimental to [Trump and Musk] companies,” Pearl told Fortune.

House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose husband dumped between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Tesla stock in June, per federal records, are among powerful lawmakers who’ve spoken out against measures to limit stock trading among congressional members, arguing that lawmakers should be allowed to participate in a free-market economy. 

Other lawmakers who regularly trade stocks have sold off their Tesla shares, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R-R.I.), who with his wife jettisoned between $130,000 and $350,000 worth of Tesla in the days before Trump’s election. Whitehouse spokesperson Meaghan McCabe told Fortune that the senator does not himself trade stocks and has a money manager who is “contractually required to act independently without any input from the senator.” She declined to name the money manager or provide further details.

Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas) similarly dumped up to $65,000 worth of Tesla stock in mid-February. She did not return requests for comment.

That Tesla’s stock price is tanking — and that few lawmakers want the stock — is of little surprise to Daniel Taylor, a professor at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on corporate disclosures and insider trading. 

“It’s pretty clear that Elon’s activity in the government is costing shareholders quite dearly,” Taylor said. “The question now is, how long can it go before they cry uncle?”

Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist. Dave previously worked as editor-in-chief of Raw Story, deputy editor at Business Insider and as an editor or reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, Politico, OpenSecrets and the Dallas Morning News. He has also written for The Atlantic, TIME, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast, NOTUS and The Ankler.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com