A prominent House Democrat is now under scrutiny following a fresh ethics complaint filed against him, triggered by his wife’s substantial $1.5 million earnings from a stock sale.
In a complaint filed Friday, the Center for Renewing America, a conservative organization, “renewed an ethics complaint against Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., for failing to properly disclose his wife’s stock holdings,” Fox Business reported.
The complaint “highlighted possible violations of federal financial disclosure laws by Raskin, who waited too long to report stock shares that his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, received for her work at a Colorado-based financial technology company,” the outlet continued.
“It is imperative that Members disclose assets that they or their families have in compliance with the law so that the public can assess what may be motivating a Member to take certain positions or actions,” says a letter from Center for Renewing America President Russ Vought, filed with the complaint.
The complaint reiterates previous allegations of misconduct against Raskin, which first surfaced in 2022. Reports from FOX Business and Business Insider disclosed that the Maryland Democrat had postponed disclosing a $1.5 million payout received by his wife following the sale of 195,936 shares of Reserve Trust. Despite the initial transaction occurring on December 18, 2020, Raskin, who serves as the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, did not submit paperwork disclosing the trade until August 2021.
The American Accountability Foundation, a conservative watchdog group, had previously filed an ethics complaint against Raskin over the disclosures in 2022. However, that complaint has since expired.
The Center for Renewing America has filed a new complaint aimed at revisiting the issue. These allegations led to the derailing of President Biden’s nomination of Raskin’s wife to the position of Federal Reserve vice chairwoman for supervision.
According to Fox Business, Vought, the former White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director under then-President Trump, accused Rep. Raskin of violating the Ethics in Government Act based on Raskin’s alleged failure to report his wife’s earned income in his financial disclosures for the years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
“This failure is a clear violation of Raskin’s reporting duties and also raises serious questions about further potential violations,” the letter says, according to the outlet. “Since Raskin did not see fit to disclose Reserve Trust as a source of income in 2017, it is unclear if he also failed to do so for subsequent years. It is possible that Reserve Trust compensated Mrs. Raskin with further shares for services rendered in subsequent years. Given Raskin’s approach to disclosure, the public would never know.”
