On July 22, 2026, the House passed a bill called the Stop Insider Trading Act. It passed 232 to 198, and Michael Guest voted yes along with every other Republican in the chamber.
Guest chairs the House Ethics Committee. That is the panel that polices what members of Congress do with their money — including enforcing the law that already exists on this exact subject, the STOCK Act.
Five years ago, he broke it.
What happened
On January 22, 2021, a family trust bought between $1,001 and $15,000 of Exxon stock and sold between $1,001 and $15,000 of BP stock. Guest's wife and sons are beneficiaries of that trust.
The STOCK Act says a member of Congress has to report a trade like that. The House Clerk didn't hear about it until October 22, 2021 — eight months later. Guest filed the paperwork on November 3 and paid the penalty.
The penalty is $200.
Here is his explanation, in full, from the disclosure report itself:
"On October 22nd, 2021, I became aware of a stock transaction made by a family trust. I do not have a decision-making role in the trust; but my wife and sons are beneficiaries, so I am bound to report certain details. I reported the transaction to the Clerk of the House on November 3, 2021, and paid the statutory remedy of a $200 late fee."
Read that carefully, because it's the whole story: he says the first he knew of it was the day the deadline problem surfaced. That may well be true. It is also exactly the answer that every member of Congress gives, and it is precisely the reason the law exists — so that the public, not the member, gets to decide whether a trade looks like a coincidence.
He was on the Ethics Committee at the time
This is the part that matters.
When this happened, Guest wasn't a backbencher who'd never heard of the STOCK Act. He was the second most senior Republican on the House Committee on Ethics — the committee responsible for enforcing that exact law on everyone else.
He went on to become its ranking Republican, and then, in the Congress that began in January 2023, its chairman. He still is.
So the man who now decides whether other members get investigated for their financial disclosures is a man whose own financial disclosure came in eight months late.
What his committee does to other people
In July 2025, the Ethics Committee Guest chairs released its findings on Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania. The committee investigated whether Kelly's wife had bought stock in Cleveland-Cliffs based on what he knew about a federal decision affecting the company's plant in his district.
The committee did not find evidence Kelly knowingly caused the trade. It found something else: that he violated the House Code of Official Conduct by failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the alleged misconduct, and that it hadn't received full cooperation from his wife. It ordered the Kellys to divest the stock.
That is what accountability looks like when the committee decides to apply it: an investigation, a public report, a finding, an order.
What it looked like when the chairman's own family trust traded oil stocks and nobody told anyone for eight months was a $200 check.
$200 is not a penalty. It's a fee.
We went through every Republican on this site and found 45 who broke the STOCK Act — some by years, on trades worth millions. The number that keeps showing up in all of those stories is the same one in Guest's: two hundred dollars, and it's often waived.
And $200 means something different to different people. In April 2026, NOTUS went through the delegation's personal financial disclosures and found Guest's median net worth is $9.7 million — held mostly in municipal bonds for Mississippi localities and institutions, plus individual stock in Meta and Exxon Mobil. Mississippi's median household income is $56,447.
NOTUS made the same connection this post does, in one sentence: "Guest — a member of Congress since 2019 — is chairman of the House Ethics Committee, which in part enforces the House's code of conduct and laws including the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act."
A $200 fee is not a deterrent to a man worth $9.7 million. It's the cost of not bothering.
And the disclosure is the entire point of the law. It doesn't stop members from trading. It doesn't limit what they can own. It says: tell us, within 45 days, so we can hold what you bought against how you voted while it still matters.
Guest's trades were in Exxon and BP. He has an abysmal 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025, and a lifetime score of 4%. Those two facts are not proof of anything on their own — and that's precisely why the timing rule exists. Filed on time, we could have looked at the trade and his energy votes side by side in early 2021. Filed eight months late, we couldn't.
The gavel
Michael Guest has represented Mississippi's 3rd District since 2019. He is a former district attorney. He wrote the resolution that expelled George Santos from the House. In April 2026 he announced his committee was opening an investigation into Rep. Eric Swalwell over sexual misconduct allegations, and told reporters, "It's possible this week that we will be voting to expel members of Congress."
He clearly believes in the machinery. He runs it.
The question a Mississippi voter is entitled to ask is a simple one: when the machinery pointed at him, what did it cost?
Two hundred dollars.
Sources
GOP Rep. Michael Guest Violates Stock Trading Rules, Submitting Disclosures 8 Months Late — Newsweek, November 5, 2021. Photo: U.S. House official portrait via Wikimedia Commons.
