Not long ago, Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a multimillionaire who represents one of Pennsylvania’s poorest congressional districts, ranked among Congress’ most prolific stock traders.
But Bresnahan appears to have stopped trading individual stocks, purchasing just four municipal and state bonds and federal government securities so far this year, a NOTUS analysis of federal financial disclosures indicates.
It’s a stark comparison to Bresnahan’s activity a year ago, when he made almost 650 individual stock trades during 2025.
Bresnahan, whose median net worth is more than $34 million, disclosed about 100 stock trades this month last year — the same month he introduced legislation to ban members of Congress from buying stocks. But after a flurry of trades in June 2025, his stock trades became significantly less frequent in late 2025, and this year, he hasn’t disclosed trading a single stock share, according to federal records.
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A spokeswoman for Bresnahan confirmed to NOTUS that the congressman has stopped trading stocks, adding, “Rob Bresnahan has never traded his own stocks and an outside financial institution manages his investments.”
The spokeswoman did not respond when asked by NOTUS what prompted Bresnahan to stop trading individual stocks and if the congressman instructed the outside financial institution to stop trading them.
During his 2024 congressional campaign, Bresnahan lambasted politicians for making big money while in office, calling it “sickening.”
But when Bresnahan entered Congress in 2025, he often traded individual stocks weekly, including of companies that had significant business with the federal government. Bresnahan repeatedly maintained that his financial trades were made by an adviser without his input.
Bresnahan’s 2026 congressional opponent, Paige Cognetti, the Democratic mayor of Scranton, has repeatedly hammered Bresnahan for his trading ways. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, has endorsed a bill limiting how members of Congress may play the stock market, and it awaits a vote on the House floor.
Bresnahan isn’t the first lawmaker to make such a dramatic shift. Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson of Texas divested from her stock holdings in order to “eliminate conflicts of interest” in August. Republican Rep. Jefferson Shreve of Indiana took similar action. And even earlier, then-Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont sold off his individual stocks in 2021 after Business Insider found he had failed to properly disclose his wife’s sale of ExxonMobil stock around the time Welch was grilling the company’s CEO during a congressional oversight hearing.
The more recent pledges from members of Congress come alongside a bipartisan push to ban stock trading for lawmakers entirely. In addition to the Stop Insider Trading Act — favored by Republican leaders but criticized by many Democrats as weak — a bill backed by both Republican Rep. Chip Roy and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and introduced in September would ban members, their spouses and their dependents from trading individual stocks. Bresnahan signed a discharge petition to conduct a vote on the separate End Congressional Stock Trading Act, a bill introduced in early 2025 that has since garnered little traction.
Bresnahan drew criticism from Democrats for selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in companies that manage Medicaid just before the House took its first vote on Republicans’ sweeping 2025 tax bill cutting the program last year.
Detractors also hammered him for buying stock in Credo Technology, a data center supplier, while advocating for the controversial centers on Capitol Hill, and for purchasing stock in defense companies such as Lockheed Martin shortly before U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told NOTUS that Bresnahan’s apparent about-face amounts to an admission that his stock trading was a significant vulnerability in his reelection campaign.
“It clearly is an issue that could be a political liability for Congressman Bresnahan, which he recognizes, and has now taken a position supporting a ban on stock trading activity,” Holman said. “It’s a recognition that there is a problem.”
Abigail Bellows, an anti-corruption expert at Common Cause, told NOTUS that the renewed focus on the issue in Congress might be what forced Bresnahan to make a change.
“Momentum has been building on this issue for a decade,” Bellows said. “Part of the reason we’re seeing more attention on it right now is that people are really frustrated with corruption ... It may be painful because it could cause some people to profit less from their office, but it’s the right thing to do, and it’s what voters expect.”
Bresnahan’s trading has become a key point in the race to defend his seat, which the Cook Political Report scores a “toss-up,” where either candidate has an equal chance of winning. Bresnahan defeated Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright by just 6,000 votes in 2024, and will now face Cognetti in November.
“As a candidate for Congress, Rob Bresnahan told Northeastern Pennsylvanians that congressional stock trading ‘is wrong and needs to come to an end immediately,’” Cognetti told NOTUS in a statement. “He broke that promise and violated our trust by making more than 600 stock trades worth over $7 million in office, all while he voted to rip away health care and spike costs.”
Cognetti, who won her race for mayor as an independent but is now running for Congress as a Democrat, launched her campaign in September by attacking Bresnahan’s financial records.
“Rob ran for Congress on a promise to ban stock trades,” Cognetti said in her launch video. “This year, he’s already made 600 trades. Sold Chinese stocks the week of a tariff, buys missile stocks before a war. Buys jet stocks before a big contract, oversees crypto, buys crypto stock before a vote.”
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