She Wants to Ban Congressional Stock Trading.
As Biden’s Ukraine Ambassador
She Made 179 Trades Worth $4 Million.
Bridget Brink — the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine under President Biden, now the Democratic front-runner in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District — has built the centerpiece of her 2026 House campaign around a single, sharp anti-corruption promise: ban federal officials, including presidential appointees like ambassadors, from trading individual stocks.
The Washington Free Beacon, reviewing more than two dozen of her own State Department ethics disclosures filed with the Office of Government Ethics, reports that during her three years running the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Brink personally executed 179 individual stock transactions worth between $754,000 and $4 million. The trading included shares in Tesla, Albemarle (a lithium-mining company directly tied to the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal she was helping negotiate), Block, Rivian, Canadian Solar, Maxeon Solar, and two Chinese electric-vehicle makers, NIO and Polestar.
Brink resigned as ambassador on April 21, 2025, citing disagreements with the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy. She announced her congressional run two months later. The plank she now leads with — that public servants should not be allowed to trade individual stocks — is, by the timing of her own disclosures, a rule she would have spent the last three years of her career personally violating in spirit.
- 179individual stock transactionsDisclosed by Brink in OGE Form 278e/278t filings to the State Department ethics office during her Ukraine ambassadorship (May 2022–April 2025) — per Washington Free Beacon review.
- $754K–$4Mtotal disclosure-range value of those tradesOGE disclosures report transactions in statutory dollar ranges; the cumulative low-to-high totals across 179 transactions.
- 142 buys / 37 sellsbetween May 2023 and July 2024142 purchases ($317,142–$2.5M) and 37 sales ($437,037–$1.4M) in a 14-month stretch — fund-heavy portfolio gave way to active individual-name trading starting 2023.
- Albemarle (ALB)owned during U.S.–Ukraine minerals talksBrink held up to $15,000 in Albemarle, a lithium-mining giant, while her embassy was indirectly engaged in U.S.–Ukraine critical-minerals negotiations — per Free Beacon.
- April 21, 2025resigned as ambassadorCited disagreements with Trump administration Ukraine policy. Announced House campaign June 18, 2025; rolled out anti-corruption platform January 7, 2026.
The pledge:Brink’s campaign website lists “Fighting corruption and defending democracy” as one of seven top-line priorities for her House run. The January 7, 2026 anti-corruption rollout, as reported by Michigan Advance, specifies the policy underneath that headline: a ban on individual stock trading by federal officials, congressional term limits, and tighter ethics rules.
The scope she names:Per her own statement reported by Michigan Advance, the ban would extend to “federal officials, including presidential appointees like U.S. ambassadors.” That language is unusual — most stock-ban bills (Hawley’s PELOSI Act, Gillibrand’s ETHICS Act) cover only Congress and spouses. Brink explicitly applied her own ban to the role she just held.
The framing quote:“The Trump Administration’s chaos and corruption is costing hardworking Michigan families,” her campaign site reads. “I’m running for Congress to hold the powerful accountable.”
The district: Michigan’s 7th — mid-Michigan, Lansing-anchored, currently held by Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Charlotte). The Democratic primary is scheduled for August 4, 2026. Brink is the front-runner of a six-candidate field that also includes former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam, Will Lawrence, Salman Rais, Alexandra Prieditis, and Elyon Badger.
“Throughout her 28 years serving our country, Bridget Brink has made ethics and transparency the highest priority.”
Sam Boorstyn, Brink campaign spokesman · to the Washington Free Beacon
For her first year in Kyiv, Brink ran a recognizable diplomat’s portfolio — broad mutual funds, ETFs, a few ARK products. Beginning in mid-2023, the picture changes. Per the Free Beacon’s read of her periodic-transaction (278t) filings, she shifts into single-name stock trading at a pace and on a list of tickers that looks much more like a retail trader than a career foreign-service officer:
Albemarle (ALB):Purchased $1,000–$15,000 on June 5, 2023. Sold $15,000–$50,000 on July 21, 2023 — a profitable turn in six weeks. ALB is a lithium-mining major; the U.S.–Ukraine critical-minerals framework was an active embassy file during her tenure.
Tesla (TSLA):Bought $2,000–$30,000 on April 22, 2024. Sold $50,000–$100,000 three months later.
Canadian Solar (CSIQ): Bought June 26, 2023. Sold at a profit three weeks later.
Maxeon Solar (MAXN):Position size up to $740,000 across 2023–2024.
Block (SQ): Position size up to $410,000.
Also disclosed: PayPal (up to $170K), Rivian (up to $165K), Polestar (up to $150K, Chinese-Swedish EV), NIO (up to $140K, Chinese EV), Expensify (up to $105K), D-Wave Quantum (up to $60K), Disney (up to $30K), General Motors (in her 2025 filing). Accounts held jointly with husband Nicholas Higgins, also a Foreign Service / USAID officer.
Compliance status:The disclosures were filed on time. The State Department’s designated agency ethics official reviewed them. None of the trades have been alleged by any regulator to be illegal insider trading. The point is not that Brink broke a law. The point is that she traded heavily, on names tied to active U.S. policy files her embassy touched, and is now campaigning to make exactly that behavior illegal.
Brink’s position is not novel. It is one of the most bipartisan reform proposals on Capitol Hill. The challenge for her candidacy is that she is staking her brand to that reform after a personal record that the reform would have prohibited.
PELOSI Act / Honest Act (Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO): Reintroduced April 28, 2025. Bans members of Congress and their spouses from holding, buying, or selling individual stocks. Permits diversified mutual funds, ETFs, and Treasuries. 180-day divestment window. Forfeiture of profits to Treasury for violations.
Committee status:The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced the bill on a bipartisan 8–7 vote on July 30, 2025, with Hawley joined by every committee Democrat. A negotiated amendment expanded the ban to cover future presidents and vice presidents.
The scope gap:Neither the PELOSI Act nor Sen. Gillibrand’s ETHICS Act covers presidential appointees in the executive branch — cabinet secretaries, agency heads, or ambassadors. That is the precise category Brink occupied for three years. Brink’s own platform language explicitly extends the ban to ambassadors. She is, in effect, calling for a rule she herself was not subject to and would have failed to meet.
Existing rules on ambassadors:U.S. ambassadors file OGE Form 278e (annual) and 278t (periodic, for transactions over $1,000) under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. State Department ethics officials may require divestiture or recusal for conflicts of interest but do not categorically prohibit individual stock trading. That is what Brink wants changed — now.
There is a clean version of this story that Brink’s defenders will offer: the trades were disclosed, the ethics office signed off, and a politician who has personally lived inside an ethics regime is exactly the kind of politician you want writing the next one. That is the campaign-spokesman version, and it is not unreasonable.
The harder version is the one the disclosures actually describe. A sitting U.S. ambassador to a country at war, while her embassy was the lead American interlocutor on a critical-minerals deal worth tens of billions of dollars, was personally trading the stock of a publicly traded lithium-mining company on a six-week round-trip. She was holding Chinese electric-vehicle stocks while her own government was tightening trade rules on Chinese EVs. She was riding Tesla into a 2024 rally while running a wartime mission. None of this is illegal as the law is written. All of it is what she is now telling Michigan voters should be illegal as the law should be rewritten.
That is not a corruption charge. It is a credibility charge. The candidate of “fighting corruption” is the candidate whose 179-line OGE record is the case study for why the reform exists.
Incumbent: Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Charlotte)— flipped MI-07 in 2024 by 3.7 points; targeted by national Democrats as a top 2026 pickup.
Democratic primary date: August 4, 2026.
Brink’s primary opponents: Matt Maasdam (former Navy SEAL, ex-White House aide); Will Lawrence (Lansing-area tenant-rights organizer); Salman Rais (family-medicine physician); Alexandra Prieditis; Elyon Badger.
Brink endorsements: EMILYs List, Michigan Education Association, former Michigan House Speaker.
The trade question for August:Whether primary voters who care about ethics and accountability — and Democratic primary voters tend to — will treat “disclosed and ethics-reviewed” as a complete answer to 179 personal stock trades from the chair of a wartime U.S. embassy, or whether they conclude that the reformer they are looking for is somebody whose own ledger does not require the reform to begin with.
Bridget Brink (D-MI) wants to ban federal officials, including ambassadors, from trading individual stocks. Her own State Department disclosures show 179 such trades, worth up to $4 million, executed from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv while she ran it. Disclosed is not the same as defensible. Michigan’s 7th District primary voters will decide on August 4.