Busted: MAGA crusader illegally hid more than $100K in crypto

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) violated federal law by failing to report massive purchases of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin within the mandatory deadline, according to a report in OpenSecrets this week.

Between January and February, Gill — an outspoken MAGA crusader — purchased between $100,001 and $250,000 in Bitcoin, per the report. However, he "disclosed both trades weeks after a 45-day disclosure deadline mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act," a 2012 law designed to rein in insider trading by members of Congress, which is already illegal but hard to enforce due to the degree of regulatory information members have outside of the public eye.

Gill has been a vocal supporter of the cryptocurrency industry and has taken over $60,000 in campaign financing from the "securities and finance" industry, according to public records.

The first of these trades came at roughly the same time President Donald Trump signed a sweeping order directing the executive branch to “establish United States leadership in digital and financial technology,” by eliminating "unnecessary government interference" in cryptocurrency — an action that sent the price of Bitcoin surging to $102,000 per coin.

The second came after a drop in Bitcoin prices, but just a week before Trump announced a "strategic reserve" of Bitcoin would be created, which sent the price skyrocketing again.

Gill's violation of the STOCK Act is not an outlier; a report last September outlined over five dozen members in both parties making various trades that violated the law's restrictions.

Some of these violations were almost identical to Gill's; for example, in January 2024, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) was caught unlawfully delaying a disclosure of his trades in the cryptocurrency Ethereum.