Ron Wyden is seeking a criminal investigation of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ financial dealings, and is pushing to make sure he doesn’t get just a slap on the wrist.
The Oregon senator, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked the Department of Justice Monday to investigate transactions in which the billionaire Ross shorted companies from which he was supposed to have divested.
Last week, the Office of Government Ethics reprimanded Ross, saying that the trades put him “a position to run afoul of the primary criminal conflict of interest law.”
In response, Ross said that he inadvertently made errors in managing the stocks in question, and committed to converting all of his equity holdings to Treasury securities to avoid further conflicts.
But Wyden is not content to leave the matter there.
“The top federal ethics watchdog confirmed what anyone with eyes and ears already knew: Wilbur Ross’s stock trades seriously compromised his ability to act in America’s best interests, and may have broken the law,” Wyden said in his letter to attorney general Jeff Sessions. “In light of this report, the Justice Department should conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that Ross was working on behalf of the American people and not just his own bank account.”
Forbes reported last month that Ross had maintained interests in several companies, including his former employer, the financial form Invesco, despite certifying that he had divested himself of the stocks. More recently, he’d also engaged in new transactions to short some of the companies.
