WASHINGTON — A Louisiana congressman quietly purchased at least six figures worth of stock in Netflix just weeks before the streaming giant announced its massive acquisition deal with Warner Bros.
Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) bought between $500,000 and $1.25 million worth of Netflix stock from Oct. 31 to Nov. 20, House financial disclosures reveal.
The curiously timed purchases came just weeks before the entertainment giant announced last Friday that it is purchasing Warner Bros and its assets, such as HBO Max, for $82.7 billion in a blockbuster deal.
That monster acquisition deal could still get foiled by the Justice Department amid Paramount’s crusade to upend the deal and encourage the Trump administration to nix it.
Ironically, Netflix’s stock has sunk in the time since Fields’ purchases amid uncertainty over the deal and Wall Street’s concerns about a bidding war.
Fields made five purchases listed in filings between $100,001 and $250,000 on Oct. 31, Nov. 3 and Nov. 20, financial disclosures show. The filings do not provide exact amounts.
His Oct. 31 transaction was when Netflix’s shares were at their highest during his purchases, at $111.89 apiece. The company’s stock closed out Wednesday at $92.71, marking a roughly 17% dip from the October purchase.
The Post reached out to Fields’ office for an explanation.
Fields also made investments in other tech or electronics companies during that time period, including Apple, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Nvidia.
So far, he is the only rep to have disclosed a Netflix stock purchase within the past month, records show.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) listed two sales of Netflix stock valued between $1,001 and $15,000 from her 401(K) on Oct. 30 and 31. She also made one purchase of Netflix stock for the same range on Oct. 30, records show.
She is the most recent rep to have traded Netflix stock besides Fields.
The Post reached out to her office for comment.
Revelations about Fields’ purchases come against the backdrop of a bipartisan push in Congress to ban members from trading individual stocks — a campaign led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.)
Luna has been gathering signatures for a discharge petition, which would enable her to secure a vote on a ban by circumventing the traditional committee process without leadership’s blessing.
She had been mounting a public pressure campaign for a ban on congressional stock trading for months. So far, she is short of the needed 218 votes to force a vote.
“Political games have already started to play out behind the scenes. I’m not waiting any longer,” Luna said after rolling out the measure. “A discharge petition is the strongest tool we have to guarantee a vote on behalf of the American people and it exists for moments exactly like this.”
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