Investigative Report: Pelosi’s Nephew’s Sweetheart Deal with HUD
- September 16, 2024
Cory Templeman, Shift Frequency
Knowing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certainly has its perks.
But, being a member of her family?
That allegedly comes with some serious financial perks in the form of sweetheart deals.
In January 2022, [HUD] approved an ethics waiver for the wife of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s nephew allowing for a potential financial conflict of interest to go unresolved, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
According to the investigative report, Laurence Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nephew, had a stake in a joint real estate venture with Goldman Sachs called Restore Utah, which benefits from HUD’s Section 8 housing vouchers, while his wife, Alexis Pelosi, was employed at the agency.
While it would usually violate federal ethics rules for a beneficiary of HUD funds to have a spouse employed at the department, HUD found an exemption that allowed Laurence to retain his stake in the real estate project. Requiring him to divest, or his project to forgo HUD funds, would allegedly result in “undue hardship” for Alexis and her husband.
Part of HUD’s reasoning was that Restore Utah was Laurence Pelosi’s “primary profession,” however, Alexis Pelosi’s financial disclosures indicate that he had four other income streams around the time the conflict of interest waiver was approved. Laurence Pelosi collected salaries from two different law firms and consulting fees from two other law firms in 2022.
However, watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) says this deal raises some serious concern that it was all aligned simply because of their connection to Pelosi.
“It’s good to be Beltway royalty,” PPT director Michael Chamberlain told the Daily Caller. “Ethics officials certainly seemed to go out of their way to find a justification for her. Waivers should be rare and limited to unique circumstances for uniquely qualified individuals. As we’ve seen, the Biden-Harris administration appears to have a different philosophy, consistently appointing conflicted individuals to powerful posts and then using waivers to magically make those conflicts disappear.”