House ethics panel to weigh action on Suozzi stock transaction filings

WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee said Thursday that it is considering what action to take on an investigation into Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi for what his office said was his failure to file required stock transaction reports in a timely manner.

Suozzi, 59, a three-term Democratic congressman from Glen Cove who is running for New York governor, acknowledged to Newsday in September that he had failed to file individual reports on transactions as required by the STOCK Act. He blamed it on “a misunderstanding.”

He was responding at that time to complaints filed by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center against him and six other members of Congress to the nonpartisan and independent Office of Congressional Ethics for failing to file mandatory periodic transaction reports on stock trading.

Suozzi did not report more than 300 transactions that ranged from $3.2 million to $11 million from 2017 through 2020, the Campaign Legal Center complaint said.

The notice the Ethics Committee issued Thursday revealed for the first time that the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated Suozzi’s financial transactions and sent a referral on its findings to the House Ethics Committee on February 28.

“The Committee will announce its course of action in this matter on or before Friday, July 29, 2022,” said the Ethics Committee, which has a policy to not issue reports or findings in a 60-day period around primary elections. New York’s primary is June 28.

A Suozzi spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that independent advisers with full discretion over transactions manage his investments, not the congressman.

“The congressman takes his disclosure obligations seriously. Every annual financial disclosure was filed and all periodic transaction reports will be filed on a going-forward basis,” it said. “The congressman would support legislation to ban lawmakers from trading stocks.”

The announcement of the ethics investigation into Suozzi complicates his run for governor in the Democratic primary against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is dealing with the fallout from the resignation of her lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, after he was arrested on fraud and bribery charges.