Byron Donalds wants to be Florida's next governor. He is the runaway front-runner in the Republican primary, backed by President Trump and the clear front-runner in the polls. But before Floridians hand him the keys to the state, they should know how he handled the one rule that tests whether a politician can be trusted with your money: telling you the truth about his own.

He failed that test 108 times.

What He Did

In September 2024, the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Donalds for failing to disclose up to $1.62 million in stock trades. The complaint counted 108 separate trades that Donalds and his wife made between 2022 and 2023 — and not one of them was reported on time.

The law here is simple. Under the STOCK Act, every member of Congress must publicly report any stock trade over $1,000 within 45 days. The whole point is so voters can see when a lawmaker might be trading on inside information, or profiting from a company they help regulate. Donalds didn't report a single trade on time for two straight years.

"The public has a right to know about potential conflicts of interest their elected officials may have," said the Campaign Legal Center's senior director of ethics, Kedric Payne. And the group found Donalds "was the only member we found who completely failed to report any PTRs for two years." Not one of the worst. The only one they found.

He Demanded Others Be Punished for This

Here's the part that turns a paperwork failure into something worse.

Back on March 7, 2022 — while he was already sitting in Congress — Donalds went on camera and attacked other members over their stock trading. When it came to lawmakers who broke the disclosure rules, he was blunt: "That's when you have to have sanctions, and the House has to get real," he said.

Then he did the exact same thing he'd just demanded others be sanctioned for. While he was on TV calling for the House to "get real," his own trades were going unreported — for the whole year, and the year after that.

This is the pattern to watch with Donalds. He is happy to hold everyone else to a standard he has no intention of meeting himself.

The Companies He Traded — and Regulates

The trades weren't in random companies. Donalds sits on the House Financial Services Committee, which writes the rules for banks, insurers, and Wall Street. Several of the companies he quietly traded are the very companies his committee oversees, according to Florida Bulldog:

• JP Morgan Chase — the bank's PAC gave $3,000 to his campaign, and the bank lobbied him on five bills he co-sponsored.
• Elevance Health — the insurance giant contributed $2,500 to his campaign.
• Humana, MSCI, RLI Corp. and WaFD — the other four of the six Financial Services companies the complaint flags, out of more than three dozen companies he and his wife traded.

That's the conflict of interest the disclosure law exists to expose. A congressman is supposed to serve the public. When he's buying and selling stock in the same companies that fund his campaign and lobby his committee — and hiding it from voters — it's fair to ask who he's really working for.

His Excuse

When the complaint hit, Donalds' office had an answer ready. A spokesperson said that "all stock trades on behalf of Congressman Donalds and his wife are completed by third-party professionals without their direction or approval," and that the congressman was "working to reconcile any outstanding infractions."

But the STOCK Act doesn't care who clicks the buy button. The reporting requirement is on the member of Congress, full stop. Plenty of lawmakers use money managers and still manage to file on time. Donalds didn't — for two years. The trades surfaced only on his annual disclosure reports, more than a year after most of them were made.

Why It Matters for Governor

A congressman who can't be bothered to disclose his own trades is now asking to run all of Florida. The governor's office controls billions of dollars in state contracts, investments, and regulation. It's the single most powerful position in the state for creating — and hiding — conflicts of interest.

And this isn't the only time Donalds has served the donor class over Floridians. His top congressional funders included the private-prison company GEO Group, whose PAC and employees gave him $16,000 in the 2024 cycle and which holds the kind of state prison contracts a governor oversees directly. He earned a 1% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters while taking money from Koch Industries. The stock-trading scandal isn't an exception to his record. It's the whole record in miniature: rules for you, exceptions for him and his donors.

Donalds is a heavy favorite, with a campaign that has raised more than $90 million. Money can win a primary. It can't change what the record shows. He demanded sanctions for stock traders who broke the law. Then he broke it 108 times.

We deserve better.

Source

This post was reported after erfanmedia's coverage of the ethics complaint; the underlying facts are drawn from the Campaign Legal Center complaint, Florida Bulldog, and WINK News.