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One of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate, heck, in the entire country, has been caught red handed involved in some very sketch trades. While Senator Richard Blumenthal may be allowed to insider trade, his families is a different story.

So let’s start my discussing wealth. Specifically that Senator Blumenthal is one of the wealthiest people in the Senate, with a net worth of over $100 million. That’s a lot of money for someone who has been heavily tied into politics for nearly 50 years now.

Blumenthal reported on a recent financial disclosure that his wife’s family, who run their very own investment fund, made between $1 million and $2 million in trades on tech, with a large portion of the purchase being Intel stock.

Three weeks after the disclosure was made, the Senate held hearings in which the CEO of Intel backed the US government offering subsidies to his company for semiconductors worth tens of millions of dollars.

Only five days later, Senator Blumenthal voted in favor of the America COMPETES Act, which granted $52 billion in subsidies to the semi-conductor industry.

Companies that benefited from the subsidies have also been big supporters of Blumenthal’s campaigns. Intel contributed $2,500 to the senator’s leadership PAC in 2020, according to Federal Election Commission. Amazon gave $5,000 to Blumenthal’s 2016 campaign. Microsoft has given Blumenthal’s leadership PAC and campaign $16,000 since 2016 as well.

This is also not the first time that Richard Blumenthal has been called out for his shady trades.

In 2021, Blumenthal’s family fund bought and sold shares of Robinhood, the stock trading platform, on behalf of the Senator. In the same time period, Blumenthal began calling for investigations into Robinhood for shutting down consumer trading of GameStop. What makes this particularly interesting is that Blumenthal failed to report these trades on time despite that being illegal.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed a complaint against Blumenthal for the Robinhood trade, however, it seems as though the Senate Ethics Committee failed to ever investigate the issue.

“Anytime a senator is buying and selling stocks in companies that they oversee, especially at the committee level, it raises red flags,” Kendra Arnold, executive director of FACT, said. “Where a senator’s personal financial interests create even the perception that he cannot act impartially, then a conflict of interest exists.”

When you view it from the outside, it seems like a classic case of politicians on both sides of the aisle coming together to protect each other when they know they are breaking the law. Do you think either party will ever actually crack down on shady business deals and government-funded oligopolies or are they too interested in getting rich and reelected?