Aaron Holmes of Business Insider he says that three of the lawmakers tasked with conducting an antitrust investigation into its activities Amazon, of Apple, of Facebook and Google own over $100.000 in shares of these tech companies.
Of course it is not the best way to conduct research.
In his post, Holmes says committee member Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin owns more than $98.000 in stock in all four companies combined. Zoe Lofgren of California owns $15.000 worth of shares in Facebook, Apple and Alphabet, though she has sold some of them recently. Steve Chabot from Ohio has $50.000 worth of Facebook stock.
It should be noted that researchers are not illegal if they own shares in the companies they are researching, but there could certainly be a conflict of interest.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet's Sundar Pichai will testify before the House Antitrust Commission on Monday, July 27. However, Axios says this could be postponed until August 3 to allow Washington to mourn former civil rights leader John Lewis, who died earlier this week.
The research aims to find out if these companies use their huge influence in the markets to stifle competition from smaller competitors. It will be held under the auspices of the United States Department of Justice and the Parliamentary Judiciary Committee.
