The Business Council of Alabama’s Political Action Committee, Progress PAC, on Thursday released a radio ad retracting an earlier spot that accused Mo Brooks of engaging in insider trading.
Brooks had denied the claim and threatened legal action. The retraction concedes that Brooks “doesn’t personally trade stocks or share inside information with those who do it for him.”
Brooks, who has been in and out of public office for over 40 years, is now running for Alabama House against young, first-term incumbent State Rep. James Lomax (R-Huntsville).
“Multiple news reports cite Mo Brooks for repeatedly violating the stock trading on congressional knowledge act,” the ad says.
“Our previous ad said Mo Brooks engaged in congressional insider stock trading. Mo says that’s false, because he doesn’t personally trade stocks or share inside information with those who do it for him. So we withdraw that language.”
The retraction resolves the legal exposure on the original ad’s specific language. However, it does not scrub the underlying record that prompted the PAC to go after Brooks on stock trading in the first place – a record Brooks himself has not contested and which remains a matter of public reporting.
According to a 2021 Business Insider investigation, the Brooks family inherited roughly $20,000 in Pfizer stock in 2019. In March 2020, the same month COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the family bought more Pfizer stock. They bought again in July 2020.
By that fall, Brooks had become one of Pfizer’s loudest public critics, accusing the company of “playing politics” with its COVID-19 vaccine data.
The family sold the entire Pfizer position on August 16, 2021, for up to $50,000.
Brooks’ wife, Martha, told Business Insider in 2021 that she handles the family’s investments and that her husband was unaware they owned the stock.
“Pfizer came and went and Mo didn’t even know we owned it,” she said.
However, the sale was not disclosed until October 14, nearly a month past the 30-day deadline set by the federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, known as the STOCK Act.
The late filing was a violation of federal law.
Brooks responded to the situation as well on Friday’s “Dale Jackson Show.”
“It never any kind of criminal allegation or anything like that,” Brooks said. “But now Progress PAC, as they’re retracting one false allegation, they’re deceiving with another by suggesting that we have done something egregious in violating the Stock Act when it’s a tardy filing of documents by my wife during times of family stress, primarily, if not all of them. And it just skipped her mind. But when she remembered it, she filed the paperwork.”
“That’s what these special interests are all about,” he continued, “And they engage in dirty politics on a regular basis. And I’ll tell you to be a candidate with this whole thing with Progress PAC and the misinformation being put out by the Lomax campaign on a regular basis, it’s torn me up. It’s torn Martha up. And this kind of dishonesty has the side effect of deterring good people from running for public office at the very time our state and country need them the most, and somebody’s got to do something to put a stop to it.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
