TRNS Interviews: "Throw Them All Out" Author

Conservative author Peter Schweizer’s new book, Throw Them All Out, has helped start a national conversation regarding how members of Congress allegedly trade stocks based on inside information. This revelation has once again sparked outrage on the part of voters who are fed up with how politicians operate inside the Beltway.

In a phone conversation today, Schweizer told me that vigilance on the part of the concerned electorate is truly the best way to reform the way Washington works. He said that anyone with a little time to spare can and should do what he did, which was peruse through thousands of congressional disclosure records online to find out whether lawmakers may have been attempting to make money off information they had access to before it became public.

“The book is really just the beginning, it’s not the end,” he said. “You can investigate your own member of Congress.”

Schweizer, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute who served as a foreign policy advisor to then-GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin back in 2008, pointed to opensecrets.org, a government watchdog website run by the Center for Responsive Politics, as a great resource for anyone interested in exploring whether elected officials may be engaging in insider trading.

“Look at the stocks and the land deals that your member of Congress has disclosed,” he said, “and then look at their committee assignments.”

During our conversation, Schweizer told me that he may not have written the book had members of the so-called “mainstream media” investigated the alleged practice more aggressively.

“It’s a little bit like if you’re the reporter covering the local baseball team,” he said. “If you say the players stink and the management’s corrupt they’re not gonna invite you into the locker room…For a lot of the Washington press corps, access is key — they wanna get the interviews with powerful people from both parties.”

He continued; “Crony capitalism is all about connections and using your influence to enrich yourself…I just don’t think the Washington press corps wants to take that on because they don’t wanna hurt their access to their sources for information.”

I asked Schweizer about the STOCK Act, a bill aimed at preventing lawmakers and their employees, as well as executive brach officials, from attempting to profit off nonpublic information. Since Schweizer’s book was featured by CBS in an episode of ‘60 Minutes’ last month, a total of four lawmakers in both the House and Senate have reintroduced some form of the bill, which has never even made it out of committee in past sessions of Congress.

Schweizer called the bill “a step in the right direction,” but said that it doesn’t go far enough to hold lawmakers completely accountable. For starters, he said, the bill does nothing to prevent members of Congress from obtaining IPO’s, something he accused Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of during her days as Speaker of the House. Schweizer also complained that the bill does not crack down on land deals, which he alleges are the reason some in Congress have been able to get rich despite pulling in annual congressional salaries of under $175,000.

Moreover, he argued, enforcing the law could prove to be difficult.

“I kinda doubt that the Securities and Exchanges Commission would be real comfortable going after a senior member of Congress, because the SEC’s budget…and the commissioner are accountable to Congress.”

Schweizer encouraged lawmakers concerned about insider trading to force politicians to move personal assets in excess of $100,000 into blind trusts. “I think that’s a far better way to go,” he said.

Click here to listen to the full interview. (8:10)