This month, people in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District got a flyer in the mail about their congressman. "PUBLIC OFFICE SHOULD NEVER BE USED FOR PERSONAL PROFIT," it says. "Kean backed legislation to prohibit members of Congress from trading individual stocks."
The flyer is about Tom Kean Jr. It was paid for "by official funds authorized by the House of Representatives" — which means you paid for it.
What the flyer leaves out is that Kean's own financial accounts trade stocks all the time. The Washington Sun, a NOTUS publication, counted at least 44 times Kean's portfolio has bought or sold individual stocks this year, putting him among the top 10 most active traders in the House. We read every one of his 2026 disclosure reports ourselves. They show stock trades in every single month from January through August — including two more stock purchases made weeks after he voted for a bill to stop members of Congress from buying stocks.
What the mailer says
The mailer runs under the slogan "Public Service. Public Trust." Its main claims:
- "Tom Kean Jr. has spent his career fighting public corruption. Now he's bringing that same standard to Congress."
- "BAN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FROM TRADING STOCKS."
- "LEAD BY EXAMPLE. Kean has put his own finances in a structure that keeps him out of investment decisions."
- "CONGRESS SHOULD WORK FOR YOU. NOT THEMSELVES."
Mailers like this are called "franked" mail — official mail from a member's office, sent at taxpayer expense. The House office that reviews them signed off on this one, "Kean Direct Mail #8," on August 28, 2026, with a note that it was only compliant if it was postmarked on or before September 3. Official mail like this can't go out in the final 60 days before an election, so it squeaked in just ahead of the cutoff — in a race that several political watchdogs grade a 50-50 contest.
What he actually voted for
On July 22, 2026, Kean voted yes on the Stop Insider Trading Act, which passed the House 232 to 198.
Notice the words the mailer uses: a ban on "trading" stocks. Now read how Kean's own office described the same bill the day he voted for it. His press release is headlined "Kean Votes to Ban Members of Congress from Trading Stocks," but its first sentence says the bill would ban members, their spouses and dependent children "from purchasing publicly traded, individual stocks." Purchasing — not trading. As we've written before, the bill lets members keep the stocks they already own and sell them later. It has been parked on the Senate calendar since August 6, so it hasn't changed anything yet.
In that same press release Kean said: "I believe Members of Congress should serve the public - not profit from public office."
What his portfolio did that day — and after
Every member of Congress has to file a report called a periodic transaction report within weeks of a stock trade. Here is what Kean's say.
On July 22 — the day he voted for the bill — his account at State Street Bank sold part of his Alphabet (Google) and Stryker stock, according to his August 18 filing. That same filing shows a family partnership in which he holds a 33% interest buying Amazon, Toast, EQT and ESAB stock about two weeks before the vote.
In August — after he voted to stop members from buying stocks — his September 12 filing shows:
- August 10: the family partnership bought Linde stock and sold part of its Amcor stock
- August 21: the family partnership bought MasTec stock
- August 27: sold parts of his Alphabet, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft stock
Gothamist, which reported on that filing, found that both new purchases, Linde and MasTec, are companies in the data center business. Kean sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and its subcommittee that oversees artificial intelligence.
The flyer, approved August 28, says nothing about any of them.
It never stopped — not even while he was gone
Kean's trades aren't a recent habit. His reports show individual stock trades every month this year:
- January: Abbott, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Markel, Microsoft and Stryker (filing)
- February: Alphabet, First Citizens, Linde and Waters (filing)
- March: Amcor, Chubb, First Citizens, Johnson & Johnson, Linde, PepsiCo, S&P Global and Waters (filing)
- April: Analog Devices, First Citizens, nVent, Take-Two and Texas Instruments (filing)
- May: Amcor and Becton Dickinson (filing)
- June: more than a dozen trades, including Alphabet, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and Wheaton Precious Metals (filing)
- July and August: the trades above
March through June is the stretch when Kean vanished from Congress and missed more than 100 votes, while his portfolio kept trading. He later revealed he had been treated for depression. Nobody should be faulted for getting help. But his accounts kept trading, and he signed every one of those reports.
"A structure that keeps him out"
Kean's defense is that he isn't the one making the trades. "I do not direct, influence, approve, or participate in a single investment decision," he told the Washington Sun. "I have placed my investable assets in a completely blind structure managed entirely by independent financial professionals."
That's not what he promised. In January 2023, as he took office, Kean said he was "committed to bringing the highest level of ethics and transparency to this office" and that he had asked his lawyer to work with the House Ethics Committee to set up a Qualified Blind Trust — the official, committee-approved kind. He had just won the seat after hammering his Democratic opponent over stock trades that weren't properly disclosed.
That trust never happened. In July 2025, his lawyer wrote to the Ethics Committee about how Kean's money is managed instead. As the New Jersey Globe reported, Kean had insisted on his own rules for how a trust would be run, and that made him ineligible for the committee's approval. So instead of a committee-approved blind trust, he has what his office calls a "blind structure."
Whatever it's called, it doesn't keep his trades out of his sight. Kean's reports list every stock bought and sold, by name and date, and each one carries his digital signature certifying it is "true, complete, and correct."
When Gothamist asked about his August trades, Kean's statement also went after the person running against him: "My ethically challenged opponent has zero credibility while she continues to peddle claims she knows have already been proven false." His opponent, Democrat Rebecca Bennett, told Gothamist she and her husband have divested all of their individual stocks.
What the filings show
Tom Kean Jr. sent voters a flyer, paid for with House funds and approved on August 28, saying he backed a ban on members of Congress trading stocks and was leading by example. His own disclosure reports show stock trades in every month of 2026 through August, and at least 44 trades this year by the Washington Sun's count. On July 22 he voted for a bill to stop members from buying individual stocks; on that same day his account sold Alphabet and Stryker shares, and in August his portfolio bought Linde and MasTec stock.
Source
Photo: Francis Chung/Politico via AP, via The Washington Sun.
