Thread by @dsamuelsohn

GOP Sen. Patrick Toomey's son poured money into GameStop during the stock's most volatile stretch — then sold out a day later as his father warned of a 'bubble' market businessinsider.com/pat-toomey-son… by @JakeLahut & @davelevinthal ($) @businessinsider

A high ranking Republican senator's son made a pair of GameStop stock trades as his father cautioned against any further regulation stemming from the Reddit-driven "short squeeze" fiasco, according to US Senate financial disclosure forms reviewed by Insider.

Sen. Pat Toomey's college-aged son purchased up to $15,000 worth of GameStop stock on January 27, then sold it the next day for an amount between $1,001 and $15,000, the disclosures show.

It's unclear whether Toomey's son, Patrick Toomey III, made or lost money. GameStop stock traded between $249 and $380 per share on 1/27 and $112.25 & $483 a share on 1/28 as the the video game retailer's share price oscillated wildly.

The transactions happened as the Pennsylvania GOP senator was publicly weighing in on a market craze that roiled Wall Street.

On January 28, Toomey released a statement saying the rapid increase in GameStop's stock price "has all of the characteristics of a bubble, and like all investment bubbles in history, this will end poorly for the people buying stock late."

Toomey also cautioned his fellow lawmakers against overreacting and moving for further regulation of the markets. "When examining this episode, regulators and Congress should tread with extreme caution and avoid needlessly inserting themselves into equity markets," he said.

In a statement to Insider, Toomey said that his son made the GameStop trades without his knowledge. Had he known about them, he would have cautioned against getting on the GameStop train.

"Had my son asked for my advice about these trades, I would have told him the same thing I said in numerous print and television interviews: that it's a classic bubble that will end badly for most participants," Toomey said.

Toomey also defended his son's right to make the stock trades. "These perfectly legal and non-controversial transactions were made by my adult son in his investment account that he controls exclusively," he said.

Toomey added: "He used only public information that was widely available at the time. The trades were made without my knowledge. I disclosed these trades in the ordinary, monthly disclosure of my, and my family's, trading activities, as required by Senate rules."

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a government affairs manager for the Project on Government Oversight, an ethics watchdog group, told Insider the trades, while entirely legal, underscore the lack of regulation on members of Congress and their families trading stocks.

"He essentially warned against Congress doing anything to prevent this kind of thing from happening again at the same time that his son may have been profiting from the extreme fluctuation in the value of GameStop stock," Hedtler-Gaudette said.

"This may have been entirely coincidental," he added, "but it sure doesn't look good from the outside, especially when the public already has a pretty negative view of Congress and views members of Congress as engaging in corrupt self-dealing as a matter of course."

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