Dozens of federal officials made lucrative stock and mutual fund trades in early 2020 as the government was preparing for the onslaught of Covid-19, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.
In January of that year, while the public was broadly unaware of the scale and severity of the threat posed by the virus, US government agencies were mobilizing for a public health nightmare. Many of the officials behind those efforts also made well-timed trades in industries that stood to gain or lose mightily from the pandemic, according to the report.
“Nearly 400 officials across 50 agencies reported owning stocks in airline, resort, hotel, restaurant and cruise companies in early 2020,” the Journal wrote. It also cited roughly 240 officials who owned between $9 million and $28 million in stocks of drug, manufacturing and biotech firms that eventually won federal contracts related to Covid-19. The WSJ report was based on financial disclosure forms for roughly 12,000 government officials between 2016 and 2021. CNN has not independently verified the reporting.