Former U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey said Monday that his decision to kill a financial oversight bill in December had nothing to do with jobs he took shortly after leaving office.
After his term was up in January, the Upper Milford Township Republican accepted a pair of positions in the private equity and cryptocurrency industries. A watchdog organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Toomey’s jobs — a director at Apollo Global Management and an adviser to Coinbase — came not long after he fought against the Enablers Act, which was introduced in 2021.
Toomey’s employment with those firms, the organization said, proves the need to reform ethics laws that address movement between the government and private sectors.
In an interview with The Morning Call on Monday afternoon, Toomey called the story “utter nonsense.”
“It’s very disappointing that a newspaper would simply take the premise of a left-wing activist group that’s doing a hatchet job and accept it as though it’s legitimate,” he said.
CREW did not immediately return a request for comment.
Virginia Canter, CREW’s chief ethics lawyer, told the Post-Gazette that most employment rules for outgoing lawmakers deal primarily with lobbying. Former House members cannot lobby for one year and senators for two years after leaving office. Similar restrictions cover certain congressional staff members.
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