Oops, she did it again.
The wife of U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) allegedly made purchased stock in March which closely resembled another stock purchase that kicked off a 2021 ethics investigation into insider trading, the Erie Times-Newsreported.
On March 28,
Victoria Kelly bought up to $100,000 of stock in Cleveland-Cliffs, a steel manufacturer in her husband’s district.
Simultaneously, Kelly was among other elected officials who were “pushing the U.S. Department of Energy to reconsider a proposed rule that would have changed the type of steel used in production of electrical distribution transformers,” the outlet reported.
The department considered switching to amorphous steel from grain-oriented electrical steel — produced at the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works in Kelly’s hometown of Butler, Pennsylvania.
Kelly said the move would put 1,300 jobs at the Butler plant in jeopardy.
The plant is the only remaining domestic producer of GOES.
Kelly also said this could be a threat to national security because the largest producers of amorphous steel are overseas.
On April 1, Kelly held a town hall, which could have had the desired effect on the April 4 decision by the Department of Energy to keep the use of grain-oriented electrical steel in distribution transformers.
When the Department of Energy first proposed the rule change in January 2023, Kelly and Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., wrote to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in “strong opposition” to the rule change.
Kelly’s wife purchased between $50,001 to $100,000 of Cleveland-Cliffs stock March 28, accordingto the Erie Times-News.
Kelly reported he was aware of the trade on May 15.
“The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge of 2012 requires members of Congress to report stock purchases within 30 days of being made aware of the transaction or 45 days from the transaction itself,” per the outlet.
The Cleveland-Cliffs stock purchase was the largest of the 11 stocks Victoria Kelly bought. They were listed on the June 14 financial disclosure.
Several investment sites — including investing.com — were the first to report Victoria Kelly’s most recent stock buys.
Kelly, through a spokesman, declined to comment on the matter to the Times-News.
This recent purchase could be considered déjà vu from what happened in 2020.
Victoria Kelly purchased Cleveland-Cliffs stock on April 29, 2020.
She bought between $15,001 and $50,000 of the company’s stock while her husband was “lobbying the Trump administration to extend previously imposed tariffs on steel imports to grain-oriented electrical steel,” the outlet reported.
Without this tariff protection, plants in Butler and Zanesville, Ohio, would not be profitable.
She bought the stock at $4.70 a share and sold it in January 2021 for $18.11 a share — representing a near 400% increase.
The Office of Congressional Ethics launched aninvestigation into the purchase.
Investigators concluded the stock purchase was a “clear departure from (Victoria Kelly’s) investment practices.”
“It also found that Kelly’s staff learned a day before the stock purchase that then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross planned to announce an investigation into foreign steel imports, a precursor to extending tariff protections, and that Kelly himself likely knew the same day of the development given his personal involvement in the matter,” the Erie Times-News reported.
Kelly, his wife and Matthew Stroia, Kelly’s chief of staff at the time, refused to cooperate with the Office of Congressional Ethics review.
The report was transferred to the House Committee on Ethics in July 2021.
In October, the House Committee on Ethics said it would continue to investigate the matter.
During this time, Kelly’s office defended her stock purchase as supporting the Butler community.
The office added that the matter became public thanks to his tranparency that the public learned about the transaction.
There has been no word regarding the status of House Committee on Ethics’ probe since late 2021.
Republicans have had the majority of the House since the 2022 midterm elections.
