Turns out, Nancy Pelosi's husband dumped a whopping $500,000 in visa stock right before the Department of Justice filed suit against the company. Now, this is an ongoing saga with the Pelosi's. [00:00:16] Right. Allegations of insider trading, allegations that Nancy Pelosi will have some briefings. She'll have information that the rest of the public is not privy to. And wow, wouldn't you know it. Suddenly that information is being used to, you know, make decisions [00:00:33] about stock trades, allegedly. Now, I say allegedly because no one's really cared enough to actually fully investigate this. But it is interesting how time and time again, the Pelosi seem to engage in, you know, stock trading that is beneficial to them [00:00:51] based on policies or lawsuits that are being implemented by the government. So let's get into the details. But before we get into the details about what the Pelosi's are up to, I think it's important to understand this DOJ lawsuit. So basically, [00:01:07] the Justice Department is currently alleging that visa has violated antitrust laws by imposing exclusionary agreements that penalize merchants who wish to use alternative payment processors, and that creates a monopoly. [00:01:23] At least that's what Merrick Garland, the attorney general, is alleging here as part of this lawsuit. Now, he also argues that this ends up harming consumers because the merchant fees are then passed on to the consumers. So visa requires volume commitments from merchants and their financial institutions [00:01:42] that force them to use visa for most of their card transactions or face steeper fees. These agreements are priced so that unless all or nearly all debit volume runs over Visa's payment rails, large disloyalty penalties can be imposed on all visa transactions, [00:02:01] according to the Justice Department. So currently the investigators are looking into Visa's relationship with companies such as square, stripe and also PayPal. And according to The Wall Street Journal, visa is alleged to have offered those [00:02:17] specific companies financial incentives to prevent the firms from using other competitive payment processors. So that's the allegation here. So for example, visa, allegedly, according to the Justice Department, coerced PayPal to encourage its customers to make payments using visa branded cards. [00:02:38] Now, here is Attorney General Merrick Garland elaborating more on what the allegations are. Visa knows it is a, quote, must carry network for banks and merchants alike. That means all merchants and banks must contract with visa, because [00:02:55] certain purchases using a visa debit card can only be completed through its network. Visa uses that leverage to get banks and merchants to agree to what are known as quote volume requirements. These provisions require banks and merchants to direct a large amount [00:03:13] of their transactions to visa, or else face higher fees. As a result, when merchants weigh the decision of which electronic payment network to use for a given transaction, they cannot choose the authorized network with the lowest price [00:03:29] or the best offering for that transaction. Instead, they operate under the threat that if they do not process enough of their payments through visa, they will face exorbitant fees on all visa debt transactions. [00:03:45] Hey, don't scroll away, come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to TYT. You power our honest reporting. You do it at t.com/team and we love you for it. Now, this is probably why Visa's payment systems account for more than 60% of [00:04:05] debit transactions in the United States, so they have really found a way to. If these allegations are proven to be true, scheme their way to the top and essentially create a monopoly in this business. Now, the Justice Department argues that visa effectively paid off potential [00:04:22] competitors before they could even develop the scale to compete in earnest. We see this happen in other sectors of the economy as well. Merrick Garland cited a series of agreements with payments company square, citing an executive saying visa has the smaller firm, quote, on a short leash. [00:04:42] I'm sure they do. Now, visa collects $7 billion in fees from merchants annually, and they also reported an $8.9 billion in revenue in their most recent quarter. Now that's insane. [00:04:59] And it also represents a 10% increase year over year. So I'm very curious to see how this DOJ antitrust suit plays out. This isn't the first time visa has been accused of, you know, breaking or violating antitrust laws. [00:05:15] They've paid some settlements in the past. The outcome of this suit could be different, but I wouldn't hold my breath. We'll just wait and see what happens. Now, with all of that in mind, let's get to Paul Pelosi and the stock trading that happened a few months prior to this suit becoming public knowledge. [00:05:33] So, less than three months prior to the DOJ announcing this lawsuit. Nancy Pelosi's husband sold a lot of visa stock. So Christopher Josephs, who's a tech entrepreneur who runs the Nancy Pelosi [00:05:49] Stock Trade Tracker on X, we've talked about this account before. It's amazing. Well, he posted a screenshot of a congressional filing on July 3rd, which showed that the former House speaker's husband, Paul Pelosi, had sold 2000 shares of visa worth between half a million [00:06:07] and $1 million. So at the time that he made this transaction, there was no public knowledge that the DOJ was going to pursue a lawsuit against visa. So, like, how could Paul Pelosi know? I mean, maybe it was just a lucky coincidence. [00:06:24] Except that's not really the case. There were already whispers, already rumors that the DOJ was going to pursue this suit. So let's go to the Financial Times, which reports that visa in 2021, disclosed in a regulatory filing that the DOJ's antitrust unit [00:06:43] had requested information on potential violations of antitrust law provisions that outlaw anti-competitive agreements and monopolistic conduct. The civil probe focused on Visa's debit card businesses in the United States, [00:06:59] as well as competition in other networks and payment methods. So dating all the way back to 2021, you had the DOJ ask for certain information from visa. Basically tipping them off that there is an impending lawsuit. All right. I think we got caught. [00:07:15] And. Are we going to really insult ourselves into thinking that there was there was no conversation happening in Congress about pursuing a suit against visa, that Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi knew nothing about this. [00:07:31] Like, this isn't the first time this has happened. This keeps happening. The Pelosi's keep engaging in like stock trading. They keep dumping stocks or buying stocks right before a major news story breaks [00:07:47] about a policy being implemented or a lawsuit being pursued. If you look at the performance of their stock portfolio, it outperforms the S&P 500 again and again and again. And I just refuse to believe that the Pelosi's are somehow geniuses. [00:08:06] I mean, the most successful in predicting how the markets are going to react And look, even if there's no wrongdoing here, and I don't buy that for a second, it gives the impression that there [00:08:22] is bad behavior taking place, that there is corruption taking place. And to be sure, when you have members of Congress or their immediate family members benefiting from insider information or benefiting in the stock market based on the policies that are being implemented [00:08:42] by our members of Congress, we've got an issue. There's a huge conflict of interest there, because think about it, guys. If you are invested in, let's say, Disney, you invested in some Disney stock, but there's a bill on your desk about potentially reining in [00:08:59] some of Disney's behavior which could cut into their profits. You're gonna you're gonna vote in favor of that legislation if your House leadership, are you going to even bring that bill up for a vote? It's a huge issue. It's a huge conflict of interest. [00:09:17] Politicians on both sides of the political aisle engage in this. Nancy Pelosi gets a lot of attention because she seems to engage in it more than other politicians in Congress. But this is wrong. And the ridiculous bad faith efforts to rein this in. [00:09:36] Just not enough. Obviously, we need to do something to ensure that our members of Congress are working on behalf of the people, not on behalf of themselves, not on behalf of their stock portfolio. [00:09:51] And we just can't ensure that if they're able to trade individual stocks. Nancy Pelosi says that members of Congress should be able to participate in the free market. I disagree with that. I think if you're a member of Congress, you have made a decision to be a public servant. That means making sacrifices, something that our members of Congress [00:10:10] forgot they were supposed to do in order to serve the people. All they think they're supposed to do is serve themselves. And if you look at how much wealth these members of Congress have accumulated while serving as United States Congress people, it's very obvious they're serving themselves. [00:10:27] I mean, it's incredible how rich Nancy Pelosi has gotten while being in politics all her life. Her salary ain't that big. People don't become, you know, I mean, she's worth nine figures at this point. [00:10:44] If you are simply a United States congresswoman and that's where you're making the most of your income, you're not going to be worth that much. So I think it's about time the American people, regardless of what your political affiliation is like, get together and demand more from our system of government. [00:11:05] Trading individual stocks is another form of corruption, and it's become so normalized that some people don't even question it. It's time to question it. It's time for them to actually behave as public servants, as opposed to greedy pigs who trade on insider information.