Rove’s Drug Stock Ties Questioned

Presidential advisor Karl Rove met with two lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry last month while he owned nearly $250,000 worth of stock in two drug companies, the White House acknowledged Friday.

Rove had what the White House described as an introductory meeting June 5 with Alan F. Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a lobbyist whose clients include the pharmaceutical trade group.

“They talked very generally about prescription drug coverage and Medicare reform and how to expand access to prescription drugs for seniors, issues we’ve been talking about for a long time,” said Jackie Cottrell, a spokeswoman for the group.

The National Journal first reported the meeting.

Rove sold all 23 of his individual stocks for $1.5 million within two days of the drug industry meeting.

“Karl was fully aware of ethical regulations and has abided by them at all times,” said White House spokeswoman Anne Womack. “On broad policy issues, it is completely appropriate for Karl as senior advisor to the president to meet with constituent groups.”

“If someone is in a key policy position at the White House, he should not be meeting with executives from corporations where he owns a substantial amount of stock,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who has urged the Justice Department to investigate Rove for possibly violating the conflict-of-interest law.

“We wrote to the White House a month ago asking for information about Mr. Rove because he met with executives of Intel,” said Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. “Now it appears that was not an isolated incident but part of what appears to be a pattern.”

At the March 13 Intel meeting, the computer chip maker’s executives made a pitch to Rove for a high-tech merger that the Bush administration approved less than two months later. The White House also acknowledged that Rove participated in meetings on the Bush administration’s energy policy while he owned stocks in energy companies, including Texas-based Enron Corp.

Womack said of the June 5 meeting that Rove’s paperwork enabling him to defer payment on capital gains taxes was being processed by the Office of Government Ethics at the time. Waxman said Rove should have divested himself of the stocks before meeting with the two lobbyists or gotten a waiver from White House lawyers letting him meet despite the stock holdings.