Pelosi aide calls '60 Minutes' report a 'smear'

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office accused the news program "60 Minutes" of omitting key information from its report Sunday on how members of Congress use privileged information to profit from stock trades.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill also called the report "a right-wing smear" based on a new book by conservative author Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University. The book is titled: "Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Jail."

Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, was highlighted in the report along with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., among others.

In an interview Monday, Schweizer said the "most egregious" allegations of insider trading concerned Bachus. At the height of the 2008 financial panic, Bachus participated in private briefings by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warning that the financial system was about to collapse.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/15/MNIV1LUUBG.DTL

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Article of report "Congress: Trading stock on inside information?"