WASHINGTON — At a Capitol Hill news conference last week, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., threatened to force a vote on legislation banning lawmakers from owning or trading stocks, arguing members can’t represent their constituents when they are focused on their own investments.
“Frankly, the fact that members are getting, what, plus-600% returns on their investments is wrong,” Luna said, flanked by both Democratic and Republican co-sponsors of the stock trading ban bill. “But more importantly, how could you ever be expected to represent your constituents when you’re clearly worried about your pocketbook?”
On Monday, President Donald Trump endorsed Luna’s push, posting a video on Truth Social of the congresswoman threatening to force a vote on the congressional stock ban.
But Luna’s most recent financial disclosure statement shows she has a significant investment of her own, illustrating how lawmakers could hold assets that pose potential conflicts of interest, even if the stock trading ban that she’s pushed for becomes law.
Luna reported in July on a financial disclosure form that she has invested $250,001 to $500,000 in America First Natural Resources LLC, a company founded and managed by one of her political donors, Bruce N. Rosenthal, who has described it as a private equity firm focused on domestic energy exploration and production.
Luna’s office said she owns no stock in America First Natural Resources (AFNR), emphasizing that she has another kind of “investment” and that she does not own any kind of stock in any company.
There is no law that broadly prohibits members of Congress from investing with political donors, but, asked about Luna’s investment, ethics groups raised concerns.
“You don’t need to be an ethics expert to see the problem with a member of Congress investing in a donor’s company that could likely be affected by the decisions of one of her committees. This kind of behavior is likely permissible according to laws and ethics rules, but that doesn’t mean it’s right,” said Donald K. Sherman, the executive director and chief counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.
“Members of Congress make the ethics rules for Congress and have the power to ensure the public is confident that their representatives are working in the peoples’ best interests, not their own,” Sherman added. “Hopefully, Rep. Luna can be a leader in changing the rules on this issue, as she has on congressional stock trading.”
Luna sits on both the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees energy and mining on federal lands, and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which investigates government abuse, but her office said she is not a member of panels that have jurisdiction over her investments.
In a statement, a Luna spokesman was emphatic that the congresswoman does not currently own any stocks and that all of her investments had been cleared by ethics attorneys.
“Rep. Luna DOES NOT OWN ANY STOCKS. Rep Luna has made public disclosures about her investments (which are NOT STOCKS) and had them all reviewed by ethics lawyers to ensure their legality. Not to mention, she does not sit on the committee of jurisdiction via her investments,” Luna spokesman David Leatherwood said in a statement to NBC News.
“Unlike some establishment types in DC, Rep. Luna is not buying stocks because she knows insider information,” he continued. “She invested in a small oil business to help create jobs and ‘drill baby drill.’”
Leatherwood added that NBC News should be focusing on lawmakers who are engaging in insider trading.
The nonpartisan independent Project on Government Oversight (POGO), which has endorsed the proposed stock ban, said lawmaker investments focused on a specific industry, like Luna’s in energy, raise red flags.
They are “ripe for manipulation or ripe for some kind of conflict of interest,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, who heads policy and government affairs at POGO.
Exemptions to the stock trading ban
The Restore Trust in Congress Act, which Luna and others announced at last week’s news conference, represents a bipartisan compromise of several efforts in Congress to try to stop lawmakers from personally profiting from insider information. Written by Republican Chip Roy of Texas and Democrat Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, the bill would bar members of Congress, their spouses, dependent children and their trustees from owning or trading individual stocks, securities, commodities or futures.
But the bill includes numerous exemptions. Lawmakers and their family members could still hold mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) so long as they are diversified and not concentrated in a single industry or business or country other than the U.S. And Treasury, state or municipal bonds would also be exempt, as would investments in gold, silver and other precious metals.
Another exemption would be any “interest in a small business concern.” It’s possible Luna’s stake in America First Natural Resources could be exempted under that category. Rosenthal has referred to it as private equity on his LinkedIn profile and few details are known about its projects since it is a private company and not subject to the same reporting disclosures as public companies.
Luna’s office did not respond to follow-up questions about the nature of her investment in the company or whether she is concerned with any perceived conflict of interest related to her investment.
The House bill would not cover the executive branch, unlike a proposal in the Senate.
An NBC News review of publicly available financial disclosures and other records shows that other key co-sponsors of the stock ban bill own stocks or have invested in both public and private companies.
According to Quiver Quantitative, which tracks lawmakers’ stock trades, Roy in 2024 sold off all of his individual stock holdings, including in Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobile Corp., and Atlas Energy Solutions Inc., as he worked with Democrats on stock ban legislation.
“To the best of my recollection, we have not acquired any new stocks since I was elected to Congress, other than equity related to my wife’s employer, while sitting on our existing (relatively modest) portfolio, in part because I had engaged to lead on this issue,” Roy, who is running for Texas attorney general, said in a statement. “With the exception of retaining some equity connected with Carrah’s employer, we decided to unload all of our equity holdings at once last year to move into broadly held mutual funds.”
Meanwhile, Magaziner’s disclosure shows he owns $15,001 to $50,000 in stock of Galileo Inc., a health care company, which his office said is where his wife previously worked.
“The Galileo stock options were part of her compensation from the company,” said Magaziner spokesman Noah Boucher. “Outside of this, Representative Magaziner and his wife only invest in widely held mutual funds and ETFs [exchange-traded funds].”
Another co-sponsor, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who is running for the Senate, reported owning “restricted shares” of three small private companies that his office said he founded or led before he was elected to Congress. The bill would likely not apply to Magaziner’s and Krishnamorthi’s investments due to its exemptions for an “interest in a small business concern.”
Other co-sponsors who appeared at the new conference, including Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., own no individual stocks, records show.
Many Republican proponents of a stock trading ban, including Trump, have pointed to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., one of the wealthiest members of Congress, whose financial disclosures show she owns millions of dollars worth of individual stocks, from Alphabet Inc. and Nvidia to Tesla. An earlier version of the Senate bill, written by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., had been named the PELOSI Act.
Pelosi endorsed the Senate legislation after its name was changed to the Honest Act.
Luna’s investment
Luna’s financial disclosure record from July shows three purchase transactions in 2024 of assets with America First Natural Resources. It was not clear from the form what type of stake she received in the company, and Luna’s office did not clarify when asked.
She invested $50,001 to $100,000 in AFNR on April 23, 2024. Roughly a month later, on May 20, 2024, two separate transactions were recorded: She invested $100,001 to $250,000 in the energy company, and then $50,001 to $100,000 more.
The Miami Herald last year reported on Luna’s investments with AFNR, and Rosenthal told the Herald that his company plans to use 3D seismic technology to locate untapped oil and gas buried under existing drilling sites. AFNR, he said, has already made investments on sites on private land in Texas.
Federal disclosure forms do not require listing specific dollar amounts, only ranges. But according to the record, her stake in AFNR represents the lion’s share of her investments, apart from a property she owns in northwest Florida, which is worth $100,001 to $250,000.
The record also showed Luna sold $1,001 to $15,000 worth of Lineage Cell Therapeutics Inc. common stock on Jan. 2, 2024. The disclosure forms do not show any other stock holdings or transactions.
Rosenthal, AFNR’s founder, did not respond to a request for comment. A phone number listed on the website for one of his other businesses, Nathan S. Jonas & Co. LLC, was not in service.
He is based in the St. Petersburg, Florida, area, which is in Luna’s district, and has donated more than $30,000 to Luna’s campaigns and her super PAC, called APL PAC, since 2020, according to the site Open Secrets. He has also been a frequent donor to members of the House Freedom Caucus, which Luna previously belonged to, and has also donated to Trump.
Luna threatens to force a vote
Luna, an Air Force veteran elected to Congress in 2022, is the only Republican from Florida viewed as potentially vulnerable in 2026. Last year, she defeated Democratic challenger Whitney Fox, 55% to 45%; the Cook Political Report has rated her seat “likely Republican.”
Luna has been one of the more outspoken critics of lawmakers owning and trading stocks and engaging in insider trading. She has repeatedly warned that she will try to force a floor vote on the bill if GOP leadership keeps holding it up.
“We’ve asked nicely for leadership to put this on the floor. If they don’t, I’m saying the timeline is the end of the month. There is a discharge petition prepared and ready to go,” Luna told reporters last week.
Supporters would need 218 lawmakers — half of the House — to sign the petition to bypass leadership and force a floor vote.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has called a potential ban a “tough issue,” noting that lawmaker salaries have been “frozen” and that they rely on other sources of income to support their children and pay for college and other expenses. (House members have been making $174,000 per year since 2009).
“I have always favored the ban, but I’ve never aggressively pushed it, because I respect the views of other people on the subject,” Johnson said. “So it’s something that we’re going to be discussing.”
POGO’s Hedtler-Gaudette commended the bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing to pass their stock ban bill. While it contains loopholes, he said, supporters can’t let the “perfect be the enemy of the good.”
“At the end of the day, you can’t write a bill that’s going to cover every possible maneuver someone might try to make to get around the rules,” he said.
“If this bill did become law tomorrow, it would be a dramatic improvement over the status quo by leaps and bounds. So, you know, progress is still progress. And even if we can’t hit a grand slam on this, you hit enough doubles and you can score some runs.”