BREAKING: ROB BRESNAHAN ADMITTED TO DISCUSSING HIS STOCK POSITIONS WITH HIS FINANCIAL ADVISOR [POLITICO]

DCCC Spokesperson Eli Cousin:
“This audio is the smoking gun. Rob Bresnahan admitted in his own words that he has discussed his upcoming stock positions while actively serving in Congress. Bresnahan’s stunning confession ties him directly to his trading activity in office, which includes dumping Medicaid-provider stocks just days before voting for devastating health care cuts. Northeastern Pennsylvanians will now hear about Bresnahan’s corruption and lies straight from his own mouth – and when they do, they’ll vote to make sure he never represents them in office ever again.”

• Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), who’s faced a firestorm over hundreds of stock trades after campaigning in 2024 on a promise to ban congressional stock trading, has insisted he doesn’t talk to his financial adviser about the activity and that he has no input on them.
• But a little-noticed local radio interview from last April contradicts a significant part of Bresnahan’s line on the market moves.
• When asked last spring about the trades after a New York Times story highlighted how he flip-flopped on the campaign pledge, he told the host, Bob Cordaro, “I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”
• The interview — which is no longer available on the website for Cordaro’s show — is starkly different from Bresnahan’s previous statements about the trading he and his spokespeople have made on multiple occasions in the last year.
• One Democratic operative aware of the audio, granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign strategy, predicted that Bresnahan’s own words in the interview could be used in ads against him ahead of the November midterms when he’ll take on Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti in a highly competitive district. Cognetti lists banning congressional trading as her first issue on her campaign website.
• In June, when pressed about the topic by a constituent during a tele-town hall, Bresnahan said, “I think you need to know that the trades are being executed on my behalf. I do not have any dialogues with my financial advisers.” In July, he said he provided “absolutely no investment advice or input to my financial advisers.”
• When asked about POLITICO’s reporting on Bresnahan, Ted Rossman, a principal analyst at Bankrate.com, said that different financial advisers have different ways of working with clients to maximize portfolio growth, with some talking to clients about individual stock positions and others being more general. “But even if it’s not a direct order to buy or sell a certain amount of an individual company, just sharing thoughts on themes in the market and the economy could be problematic politically since members of Congress have information that the average public is not privy to,” said Rossman.
• Bresnahan, who comes from a wealthy Pennsylvania construction family, has bemoaned the controversy, raising the question in July that if he stopped trading, he could lose money. “And then do what with it? Just leave it all in the accounts and just leave it there and lose money and go broke?”
• When running for Congress in 2024, Bresnahan campaigned on a pledge to ban congressional stock trading, writing in a letter to a local newspaper that “the idea that we can buy and sell stocks while voting on legislation that will have a direct impact on these companies is wrong and needs to come to an end immediately.” But last year he was one of the most prolific stock traders in Congress, making more than 600 stock trades in 2025 before suspending the trading toward the end of the year after much criticism.
• During the tele-town hall in June, one woman who said she had voted for him confronted Bresnahan, telling him, “You’re making all these trades … I thought you were supposed to stop trading,” adding, “I didn’t send you there to trade.”