Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.), a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has violated a federal conflicts-of-interest and insider trading law by failing to properly disclose sales of Amazon and Tesla stock.

Evans was three and a half months late in revealing his sale of between $15,001 and $50,000 in Amazon stock and between $1,001 and $15,000 in Tesla stock, an OpenSecrets review of congressional financial records indicates. 

Evans sold his shares on Oct. 29, a week before Election Day, but did not disclose the fact until this week.

The trades and their timing are especially notable given recent political actions by the leaders of Tesla and Amazon.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a Republican Party megadonor whom President Donald Trump empowered to reshape the government workforce. Jeff Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon, torpedoed an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Bezos then attended Trump’s inauguration as an honored guest, alongside Musk. Both own aerospace and technology companies that have government contracts worth billions of dollars.

Evans’ congressional office acknowledged a request for comment Thursday from OpenSecrets but did not return several follow-up phone calls and emails or otherwise respond.

“The law that requires members of Congress to disclose financial information is extremely important because it is the only method the public has to determine whether they have a conflict of interest,” said Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust. “For instance, if a member makes stock transactions but does not disclose them or does so late, it makes it difficult or impossible to determine whether they used nonpublic information when making their financial decisions or if their personal investments influenced official action. 

Evans, who won re-election last year in an uncontested general election, has criticized Musk of late.

“Elon Musk and Donald Trump have been ignoring funding laws already passed by Congress,” Evans said in a statement last month.

“The Musk-Trump administration owes it to the American people to reverse the damage they’ve done to people’s lives, services, and earned benefits,” Evans posted this week on the social media platform Bluesky.

Evans has also touted his work to secure federal funding for electric vehicle chargers throughout his Philadelphia congressional district — chargers that ostensibly make electric cars such as Tesla more attractive to car buyers.

A second violation

This isn’t the first time Evans has been a STOCK Act scofflaw: In 2021, Evans was late disclosing his sale of up to $15,000 worth of stock in American Electric Power Co. Inc., Business Insider reported. (Lawmakers are allowed to post the values of their trades in broad ranges.)

The STOCK Act generally requires federal lawmakers to disclose a host of financial transactions — such as buying or selling stocks, bonds and cryptocurrency — within 45 days of a trade, including trades by spouses and dependent children. Disclosures after 45 days are considered in violation of the STOCK Act and subject to a fine.

But the fine is nominal — $200 for first offenders — and the House Ethics Committee, which is the primary enforcer of the STOCK Act, may choose to waive it without publicly disclosing it has done so. The Department of Justice has criminally investigated a handful of alleged STOCK Act violations but declined to bring charges.

It’s unclear whether the Ethics Committee penalized Evans for either of his two STOCK Act violations.

On Friday, the committee’s chief counsel, Tom Rust, told OpenSecrets he had no comment.

Since the 2024 election, Republicans in Congress have all but avoided buying and selling Tesla shares despite most conservative lawmakers cheering Musk’s government involvement, Fortune reported last week. 

Money may be the overriding reason: Tesla’s share value has plummeted during Musk’s polarizing run at the Department of Government Efficiency, in part because of his role leading Trump’s efforts to slash tens of thousands of jobs within the executive branch. Having soared past above $428 per share in mid-January, Tesla stock fell below $243 per share during trading Friday.

But at least eight congressional Democrats have actively traded Tesla shares between the election and now, according to federal records.

Among them is Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), a member of the Financial Services Committee who has made multiple Tesla-related stock moves over the past month. His office declined to comment.

Evans’ STOCK Act violation is simply the latest in a congressional epidemic: Dozens of members of Congress  — Democrats and Republicans alike — have been caught violating the law during the past several years.

Last month, OpenSecrets exclusively reported that Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) violated the STOCK Act by failing to properly report his wife’s five-figure investment in MicroStrategy Inc., a business intelligence and cryptocurrency firm that owns more than $40 billion worth of Bitcoin.

Stalled reform efforts

“The American public should never have to wonder whether their elected representatives in Congress are putting their stock portfolio ahead of the public interest,” said Donald Sherman, deputy director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Buying and trading these assets while serving in Congress is an obvious conflict of interest that also undermines public trust in government at a time when the civil service is being unfairly targeted. That’s why Members of Congress should be banned from owning or trading individual stocks and similar financial instruments.”

And a bipartisan group of lawmakers has grown frustrated with this parade of STOCK Act violations — coupled with revelations that some lawmakers are actively trading stocks in industries, such as health, defense and energy, that they oversee from Capitol Hill.

This has prompted them to introduce several bills during the three most recent congressional sessions that would ban or limit federal lawmakers and their immediate families from trading individual stocks at all.

For example, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) introduced in March the End Congressional Stock Trading Act, which is co-sponsored by Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas).

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is the primary sponsor of the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act of 2025, which seeks to prohibit members of Congress from owning most stocks, bonds or other investment vehicles that are “significantly based upon a covered defense contractor or an entity in the defense industrial base.” It presently has 12 co-sponsors, all Democrats.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has introduced a nonbinding resolution that — among other aspirations — asserts that “members of Congress should not be able to hold, unless in a blind trust, and trade stocks while retaining access to confidential information or crafting policies, as this leads to conflicts of interest, corruption, and even the possibility of insider trading.”

Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist. He served as OpenSecrets’ editorial and communications director from 2009 to 2011.