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Sen. Susan Collins helped walk a 2012 instrumentality that affirmed that members of Congress are not exempt from insider-trading laws and required members to much promptly disclose their trades of stocks and different investments. But an advertisement from a pro-Democrat radical falsely claims that the Republican legislator “doesn’t think” that insider trading “should beryllium illegal.”
The TV ad from Majority Forward, an contented advocacy organization, goes connected to accidental that Collins, who is moving for reelection successful Maine, “is trying to support it truthful senators tin get affluent playing the banal market.” And a spokesperson for the radical criticized the effectiveness of the 2012 law, telling america successful a connection that Collins is “blocking the lone happening that would really work” to halt Congress from profiting connected insider accusation – “a prohibition connected members trading idiosyncratic stocks.”
It’s existent that Collins does not enactment a implicit prohibition connected banal trading by representatives and senators. A spokesperson for her Senate run told america that she believes they should inactive beryllium capable to person a banal portfolio that is “managed by an extracurricular advisor who makes the decisions independently and without consultation with the member.”
But that’s not the aforesaid arsenic reasoning that insider trading should beryllium legal.
As of July 7, Majority Forward had enactment much than $628,000 into moving the ad, which began airing successful Maine and different parts of the New England portion connected June 27, according to AdImpact. The radical is affiliated with Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic ace PAC, that is trying to support Collins from winning a sixth term representing the Pine Tree State.
The advertisement begins with a antheral saying that her agelong Senate vocation has changed Collins. Then, helium says: “Getting affluent from insider trading should beryllium illegal, but Susan Collins doesn’t deliberation so. Susan Collins is trying to support it truthful senators tin get affluent playing the banal market.”
The advertisement ends with a plea for viewers to “tell Susan Collins to halt the legislature banal trading.”
We’ll get to Collins’ presumption connected authorities to prohibition members of Congress from trading stocks shortly.
But the ad’s different assertion astir her stance connected the illegality of insider trading is wrong.
“Majority Forward is lying,” Blake Kernen, a spokeswoman for the Collins campaign, said successful an email astir the ad. She told us, with emphasis: “Insider Trading IS amerciable — and it should be. In fact, Senator Collins wrote the instrumentality signed by President Obama that explicitly ensured that Members of Congress and their unit are not exempt from insider trading laws.”
Indeed, successful 2012, six years aft it was archetypal introduced and attracted small support, Congress approved the Stop Trading connected Congressional Knowledge, oregon STOCK, Act, which Obama aboriginal signed into law. It passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support, including from Collins, who helped constitute parts of the authorities and usher it done the Senate.
Among different things, the STOCK Act clarified that existing laws and rules prohibiting insider trading besides applied to members of Congress, legislature staffers and different national officials. It reiterated that members and their unit are prohibited from utilizing nonpublic accusation derived from their authoritative positions for idiosyncratic benefit. And it changed the disclosure rules truthful that definite banal transactions exceeding $1,000 had to beryllium reported successful nary little than 45 days — alternatively than conscionable erstwhile a twelvemonth successful an yearly report.
The instrumentality was intended to code nationalist mistrust implicit allegations of insider trading by members of Congress, including during the Great Recession successful 2008, erstwhile immoderate members reportedly made changes to their concern portfolios aft learning details astir the looming illness of the U.S. system successful backstage meetings with the apical economical officials.
“This common-sense authorities … makes it crystal wide that members of Congress are forbidden from trading connected insider information,” Collins said successful a connection astatine the time.
STOCK Act Criticism
However, critics of the instrumentality accidental that it has mostly been ineffective.
“While the STOCK Act has helped exposure the grade of imaginable conflicts of involvement and provided the nationalist with transparency into lawmakers’ fiscal activities, a deficiency of enforcement has stopped it from achieving the extremity of curbing insider trading,” the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center wrote successful a September 2025 analysis.
For example, the CLC, which focuses connected voting rights and legislature morals rules, pointed retired that the archetypal punishment for members who don’t record their disclosure reports connected clip is simply a $200 good – “a hardly impactful deterrence from the imaginable millions to beryllium made disconnected the banal market,” the halfway said.
Also, a Business Insider report from January 2023 said that the interest for a disclosure usurpation is sometimes waived by the House and Senate morals committees liable for enforcement.
Moreover, the CLC has noted that, “despite credible allegations,” nary subordinate of Congress has been prosecuted for insider trading nether the instrumentality – which it has attributed to “the precocious modular for insider trading nether the STOCK Act and investigatory hurdles.”
Majority Forward emphasized the law’s shortcomings successful defence of its ad.
“The 2012 STOCK Act was expected to halt insider trading successful Congress, and it has failed – truthful severely that Susan Collins, who helped constitute it, broke it herself and paid nary price,” Lauren French, a spokeswoman for Majority Forward, said successful a connection emailed to us.
“Now she’s blocking the lone happening that would really work: a prohibition connected members trading idiosyncratic stocks,” French said. “That puts her against 86% of Americans and 95% of Mainers – and connected the broadside of a loophole she’s personally profited from, which is precisely the constituent made successful this ad. Standing successful the mode of a wide popular, bipartisan, tougher portion of authorities is, by default, opposing stricter enforcement and allowing for the continued signifier of insider trading to occur.” (French linked to polls successful caller years that recovered specified precocious enactment for a prohibition connected banal trading by lawmakers.)
NOTUS reported successful March that Collins violated the law’s disclosure request successful February, erstwhile she disclosed her husband’s acquisition of a Pfizer firm enslaved 5 days aft the 45-day reporting deadline.
Kernen, the Collins run spokeswoman, told the quality outlet that concern decisions for Tom Daffron, Collins’ husband, “are made exclusively by a third-party advisor without his consultation.” In addition, she said that Collins “has ne'er bought, sold, oregon owned immoderate idiosyncratic shares of stock” during her Senate vocation – a constituent that Kernen reiterated successful an email to us.
It’s besides the lawsuit that Collins has opposed proposals that would wholly prohibition members of Congress and different high-ranking national employees from buying and selling stocks and different securities. She has alternatively argued for greater enforcement of the STOCK Act.
But the advertisement goes beyond making those points by inaccurately claiming that Collins “doesn’t think” insider trading “should beryllium illegal.”
“Insider trading is already illegal, and Sen. Collins believes that the instrumentality that is already successful place, successful summation to the robust fiscal disclosure requirements, supply due safeguards and should beryllium enforced,” Kernen told the Bangor Daily News for an August 2025 communicative astir Collins opposing legislation enactment guardant by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
That bill, which Hawley introduced with a bipartisan radical of chap senators, would prohibition members of Congress, the president, the vice president, and their spouses and babelike children from holding, buying oregon selling stocks, according to a property release.
When we asked astir Collins’ existent position, Kernen said successful her email, “She believes that Members of Congress should not beryllium allowed to bargain oregon merchantability idiosyncratic stocks unless the banal portfolio is managed by an extracurricular advisor who makes the decisions independently and without consultation with the member.”
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The station Democratic Group Makes False Claim successful Insider-Trading Ad Attacking Susan Collins appeared archetypal connected FactCheck.org.
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