Anthony Scaramucci says the CLARITY Act’s new restriction on federal officials issuing or sponsoring crypto assets does not go far enough. The SkyBridge Capital founder said the same ethics principle should apply more broadly to insider trading, rather than being limited to digital assets.

Speaking on CNBC, Scaramucci argued that Congress’s compensation structure is part of the problem. The debate matters beyond crypto because the CLARITY Act is aimed at setting rules for digital asset markets, while its ethics provision has become a test of how far lawmakers are willing to restrict officials’ personal financial activity when public duties and private interests may overlap.

Congressional Pay and Trading Scrutiny

Members of Congress earn $180,000 a year, a salary Scaramucci said can encourage some lawmakers to seek financial opportunities connected to information they obtain while in office. As an alternative, he pointed to Singapore, where senior officials receive multimillion-dollar salaries alongside stricter ethics enforcement.

Scaramucci’s comments come amid long-running scrutiny of congressional stock trading. Public trading records have shown that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio, managed by her husband Paul Pelosi, has repeatedly outperformed both the S&P 500 and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Pelosi’s 2024 disclosures showed a 70.9% gain, compared with a 24.9% return for the index. Cumulative figures since 2014 have put her total returns thousands of percentage points ahead of the benchmark. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has previously accused Pelosi of trading on nonpublic information, though Pelosi has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

STOCK Act Precedent

Scaramucci also referred to an earlier effort to weaken congressional trading oversight, saying lawmakers once rolled back a transparency requirement through a procedural vote that avoided public scrutiny.

That comparison reflects a prior episode involving the STOCK Act. Congress passed the law in April 2012 to prohibit members from trading on nonpublic information. A year later, lawmakers quietly amended it to remove the requirement for a searchable online database of staff trades, approving the rollback by unanimous consent with no recorded vote.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has since called for tighter limits on congressional stock trading.

“They can’t afford two houses… they have all these different loopholes, and they have all these junkets, and they have these ways to get them money.” — Anthony Scaramucci, CNBC

The updated CLARITY Act already prohibits the president and other federal officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets, a provision Scaramucci previously described as the bill’s ethics compromise being dead on arrival. Whether Congress applies the same approach to its own stock trading remains unresolved as the bill faces a narrow legislative window before the August recess.

If the crypto restriction becomes a precedent, Scaramucci’s broader proposal would still face an institution that has resisted stricter trading limits for more than a decade.