GOP Cyber Committee Member Dumped Microsoft Stock Not Long Before the Pentagon Nixed JEDI Deal

A freshman Congressman near the Pentagon’s now-defunct $10 billion cloud computing take care of Microsoft apparently dumped inventory within the firm shortly earlier than the contentious contract went stomach up weeks in the past.

Rep. Pat Fallon, of Texas, not too long ago offered off as a lot as $250,000 of MSFT inventory, solely weeks earlier than the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure deal between America’s navy institution and the tech large was abruptly known as off, public disclosures forms present.

Problematically, Fallon additionally serves on the committee that was tasked with overseeing the deal. The House Armed Services Committee’s new subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems is answerable for the Defense Department’s “tech spending” and has been responsible for “keeping a close eye on” on JEDI—which might’ve seen the migration of large quantities of DoD knowledge to a industrial cloud system and was the topic of intense company competitors.

Last September, the Pentagon introduced Microsoft could be dealing with the contract however subsequently reversed itself in July, claiming that the deal could be canceled on account of shifts within the DoD’s wants.

We reached out to Rep. Fallon’s workplace with a request for remark and a spokesperson supplied us with the next assertion:

“Congressman Fallon had absolutely no prior knowledge the Pentagon intended to cancel the JEDI contract. Any accusation that Congressman Fallon acted inappropriately with his routine stock transactions is wildly speculative and has no foundation in truth. We challenge anyone to bring one shred of actual evidence to back up this ridiculous accusation.”

Fallon has argued that the promoting of the inventory was mainly simply dumb luck, for the reason that inventory he owned was a part of an choice name—a transaction through which he had purchased $250,000 in MSFT shares on May 26 earlier than promoting the “rights to other investors to purchase at a later date,” Salon studies. Those traders subsequently determined to purchase Fallon’s shares on June 21, which pressured him to dump his place within the tech firm. It simply so occurred that this occurred a few weeks out from JEDI’s premature demise. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

However, the allegations aren’t the one monetary points Fallon is at present coping with. He additionally not too long ago caught flack for failing to properly disclose hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in inventory trades—inflicting some to wonder if he would face ethics violations. When the information broke, a spokesperson for Fallon claimed he was “unfamiliar with how frequently members of Congress are required to file financial disclosures.”