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.
Bresnahan campaign spokesman Chris Pack said Bresnahan’s comments were “referring to 30,000 foot investment strategy and not about stock trades, and that is clear in the surrounding context of the interview.”
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.”
A month later, he inserted a line in his Periodic Transaction Reports in which he asserted: “All investment decisions related to my personal financial portfolio are delegated to professional financial advisors. I have no role in, nor am informed of, specific investment decisions prior to their execution.” Members of Congress are required to file the reports to disclose Wall Street transactions.
During a time of public distrust of Congress, the issue of congressional stock trading has become a symbol of members appearing to enrich themselves based on inside information that they learn in office. Even President Donald Trump called for a ban on this type of trading during his State of the Union address. Both parties have competing proposals to reform the practice but action is currently stalled.
Bresnahan’s congressional spokesperson, Hannah Pope, told the New York Times in August that the trades are done by a financial adviser without his input. He learns about them when the public does through reports that members of Congress have to file on their trading, she said.
In the April interview with Cordaro, he was asked by the friendly conservative host: “Sum and substance, you’re saying, ‘Look, I did not buy and sell on information I’ve gleaned here in Congress. My adviser’s doing my trading for me, and I am duly reporting it.’ Is that fair?”
Bresnahan responded by saying, “Absolutely. Absolutely. Right hand to God on my mother’s life. Without a question.” He then said he sometimes learns about the trades on X accounts that track congressional stock trading reports. “I’m not on a day by day, minute by minute. I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”
Bresnahan then says he “actually even took it a step further” and is exiting his real estate holdings in Pittston, a city in his district, to avoid conflicts of interests in his congressional work.
Pack, the Bresnahan campaign spokesperson, called questions about his investing “a ridiculous stretch.”
“To imply that Rob having the equivalent of a routine annual 401(k) meeting with his financial advisers to discuss risk tolerance amounts to insider trading would mean that every member of Congress or congressional staffer who discusses risk tolerance as part of their retirement planning is also engaged in insider trading,” he said.
“Does this same standard apply to Goldman Sachs banker Paige Cognetti, whose financial disclosure reports list millions of dollars in investment holdings, and whether she has routine conversations with her financial adviser about long-term strategy?” (Cognetti worked for Goldman Sachs between 2014 and 2016.)
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.
Among his trades at issue have been the sale of Pennsylvania health care-related bonds worth between $100,001 and $250,000 and stock in four Medicaid providers worth up to $130,000 before he voted on massive Medicaid cuts. Democrats seized on clips of the Bresnahan trades that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico brought up on Joe Rogan, during a discussion of how broken Washington was, and even on conservative channel OAN.
The trades have also been noticed by his constituents, with 54 percent of voters in his swing district knowing about the trades in an August Public Policy Polling poll commissioned by Democratic group House Majority PAC. House Republicans also have privately raised concerns about the issue hurting Bresnahan, who has since introduced his own legislation to ban stock trading.
His trading has made its way into the campaign. A seven-figure TV ad campaign is already underway that cites his Medicaid-related stock trades. Cognetti, who does not own any individual stocks, featured Bresnahan’s stock trading as one of her main issues in her announcement video.
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.”
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