The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should investigate possible insider trading of shares of student loan company Navient Corp., Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon) said Monday in a letter to the agency chairman, Jay Clayton, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The trades occurred just before public disclosure of a letter from the Department of Education to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that marked an important shift in Trump administration policy. The change — that the Education Department would no longer share information on the student loan market with the CFPB — was significant enough that it later prompted one analyst to upgrade Navient shares to a “buy” rating. The circumstances surrounding the well-timed trades and the publication of the letter “raise questions about whether one or more [Education] Department officials may have engaged in the unauthorized disclosure of material, nonpublic information,” the two Democrats wrote in the letter. They echoed an Oct. 10 letter from the AFL-CIO, in which the labor organization called attention to a series of well-timed trades before the Labor Day weekend. The SEC should “examine the trading in Navient’s common stock on Aug. 31,” the AFL-CIO said.
