Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith has seen certain investments in her family’s stock portfolio accumulate significant wealth in just a few short months.
Records with the U.S. Senate Financial Disclosures Database indicate that Sen. Smith’s husband, Archie, purchased up to $200,000 of stock in Artivion, Inc. in November of 2023. A medical device company based in Georgia, Artivion specializes in developing products that assist medical professionals in treating various heart diseases and conditions.
As a U.S. senator, Smith serves on the chamber’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. That committee has jurisdiction over federal legislation relating to healthcare policies, government health agencies, and biomedical research and development.
Since Archie purchased up to $200,000 of stock in Artivion in November, the company’s stock has doubled in value, according to Quiver Quantitative, a popular tracker of investments made by U.S. politicians.
This keeps getting more ridiculous.
In November, we published a report on a trade by Senator Tina Smith that looked suspicious.
She bought up to $200K of stock in a company called Artivion.
The stock has now risen 109% since then…
There's more:
It’s a medical devices… pic.twitter.com/GJc7YGoaH6
— Quiver Quantitative (@QuiverQuant) July 18, 2024
Alpha News reached out to Sen. Smith’s office seeking comment but did not receive a response.
Last year, Alpha News reported that Sen. Smith’s husband had invested significant sums of money in Artivion and another medical device company, Tactile Systems Technology Inc. Archie’s November 2023 investment in Tactile Systems Technology was at first lucrative, increasing by as much as 50% after his purchase, before falling significantly.
In 2022, the New York Times reported that the stock trading of Smith’s husband represented a potential conflict of interest for the senator. Responding to the New York Times, Smith said, “I do not know about and have absolutely no role in any of his investment decisions” in reference to her husband. In a 2022 annual report, Smith and her husband were collectively declared to “possess assets that are cumulatively valued between $4 million and $8 million. However, these reports indicate that the vast majority of these assets are owned by her husband, Archie.”
Conversely, Democratic Minnesota Congresswoman Angie Craig, who was also highlighted in the New York Times report, has repeatedly called for a ban on congressional stock trading. For the last few years, Craig has introduced a bill to ban stock trading by federal legislators and their spouses. Just days ago, Rep. Craig led several members of Congress in authoring a letter which urged congressional leaders to hold a vote on legislation that would “prohibit members of Congress from owning or trading stocks.”
“According to recent polling, 86 percent of Americans–including 87 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats, and 81 percent of Independents–support prohibiting members of Congress and their families from trading stocks,” the letter said.
Rep. Craig was joined by two Minnesota Democrats, Congressman Dean Phillips and Congresswoman Betty McCollum, in authoring the letter.
Evan Poellinger
Evan Poellinger, the Alpha News Summer 2024 Journalism Fellow, is a native Minnesotan with a lifelong passion for history and politics. He previously worked as a journalism intern with the American Spectator and an investigative journalism fellow with the Media Research Center. He is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross with degrees in political science and history.
