The oracle of Oracle?
Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) bought a boatload of the tech company's stock. Days later, President Trump announced Oracle would be the centerpiece of a huge TikTok deal.
Here’s what we don’t know about Rep. Cleo Fields’ big purchase of Oracle stock: what the Louisiana Democrat knew — if anything at all — about President Donald Trump’s announcement that the tech company would be a cornerstone partner in a new U.S. TikTok company.
Here’s what we do know, as I reported this week in NOTUS:
Fields is a member of the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, which has jurisdiction over laws and government programs affecting financial markets and the securities industry.
Fields personally purchased between $80,000 and $200,000 worth of Oracle shares across three different trades — on Sept. 17, 18 and 23, according to a congressional financial disclosure document I reviewed.
News of Oracle’s participation in a TikTok spinoff from Chinese company ByteDance broke on Sept. 22.
Trump on Sept. 25 signed an executive order affirming Oracle would play a leading — and potentially lucrative — role in a new TikTok company.
I sent several emails and made several phone calls to Fields’ congressional office inquiring about the congressman’s stock purchase. Twice, I spoke with staffers who acknowledged my inquiries and took messages. I never heard back from Fields or a Fields spokesperson.
But Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, had thoughts.
“The fact that Rep. Fields is a member of the Financial Services Committee means he, of all members of Congress, should know better,” Hedtler-Gaudette told me. “We don’t know for certain if the congressman was acting on any insider information but the sequence of events sure looks fishy … This kind of activity is exactly why the American public has dismally low approval for and trust in Congress.”
There’s a lot more to this story. Read the full scoop here.