Mysteriously vanished GOP congressman still trading stocks despite missing 50 votes

Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) has rapidly become one of the biggest mysteries on Capitol Hill, as he has been absent for weeks due to an unspecified medical issue his office will not elaborate on, with no timeline for when he might return.

The 57-year-old has not cast a vote since March 5, missing 50 roll call votes in the process.

Even while he is gone, however, he appears to still be making stock trades.

According to Dave Levinthal of NOTUS, "Congressional financial records reviewed by NOTUS indicate Kean bought and sold shares of eight different stocks between March 10 and March 31, including those of Amcor, Chubb Limited, First Citizens BancShares, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo."

In the past, Kean, who was first elected to Congress in 2022, has been accused of violating the STOCK Act, a financial disclosure law that is meant to make it harder for members of Congress to illegally trade stocks off inside legislative information.

A report in 2024 detailed how dozens of members of Congress, in both parties, have committed similar violations, playing fast and loose with rules about when they must report on financial trades.

This comes amid years of broader debates in Congress about whether to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks altogether, a proposal that has support from members of both parties but has so far been consistently shut down by lawmakers who rely on stock trades for side income.