| He kept a stake in the pipeline company he ran while he wrote a pipeline permitting bill. |
| LEAD ESSAY / 4 MIN / 4 DOCUMENTS / STORY FILE ARMSTRONG-PTR |
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| How many stock trades could you make in your first week at a new job? |
| I'd guess none. You'd spend that week finding the coffee and learning who signs your timesheet. Alan Armstrong was busier than that. He took the oath as a senator from Oklahoma on March 24. And by March 31, his accounts had logged 701 stock trades... |
| So who is he? Armstrong ran Williams Companies, a Tulsa pipeline company, as its CEO from 2011 to 2025. The Tulsa World still called him its executive chairman in June. On Wednesday he voted for a ban on congressional stock buying. That ban would have let him keep every share he owns. |
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Williams Companies and an 83-page bill |
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| Let me walk you through why he's in the Senate at all. Governor Kevin Stitt appointed him to finish Markwayne Mullin's term, because Mullin left to run Homeland Security. Stitt picked him for one issue, which is permitting. That's the federal sign-off a company needs before it can build a pipeline or a power line. In late June, Armstrong introduced the American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act. Its 83 pages limit the grounds and the time for challenging a permit, the Tulsa World reported. They restrict court action too. |
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| "This is not a messaging bill." |
| ALAN ARMSTRONG, VIA TULSA WORLD |
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| I believe him on that point, and that's what worries me. A man who ran a pipeline company wrote the rules for pipelines. His office told NOTUS there's no conflict. It said he'd sold a large amount of Williams stock since his appointment, and that's true as far as it goes. On June 24, a joint account sold between $5 million and $25 million of Williams shares. But the filing calls it a partial sale, which in plain English means he kept some... |
| Two months later he added to the position. On August 19 and 20, he bought Williams stock options worth up to $65,000, Benzinga reported on September 17. An option is a contract to buy or sell a share at a set price later. So its value goes up and down with the company's stock. |
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703 lines, filed after the deadline |
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| Here's the paperwork behind all of this. A senator who trades stock files a periodic transaction report. In plain English, that's a public list of each trade. The STOCK Act allows 45 days. Armstrong filed his on July 21, and NOTUS found his March trades came in more than two months late. |
| FILED / PERIODIC TRANSACTION REPORT, JULY 21 |
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| The report lists 703 transactions. Of those, 701 are dated between March 24 and March 31. Its two largest lines are the June Williams sales, worth at least $5.25 million together. A note at the bottom says an outside adviser placed the March trades to follow an index. |
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| What's on the list? He bought at least $250,000 of Apple on March 27. Defense contractors show up as well, including RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and L3Harris. The standard fine for a late report is $200. NOTUS asked his spokesperson whether he'd paid it, and got no answer... |
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53 to 47, and the shares he keeps |
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| On Wednesday the Senate took up the Stop Insider Trading Act. Under it, members couldn't buy new stock. They could keep what they already hold. Republicans voted yes as a bloc, Armstrong among them, and every Democrat voted no. So it failed 53 to 47, seven votes short of the 60 it needed, Roll Call reported. |
| Now read the July report with that bill in mind. None of those 703 trades would have been undone. He'd have kept the Apple shares and the Williams stake. And Oklahoma law bars him from running for the seat, so he leaves in January either way... |
| So here's your stake in it. RTX, a name on his March list, won a Pentagon missile contract worth up to $20.7 billion. That was announced on September 28, and your taxes cover it. Your power bill pays for the pipelines his permitting bill would approve faster. You'll never write the rules for a company in your 401(k). He got to write them for the industry he ran. |
