Democratic congressional candidate Dan Koh came under scrutiny after financial disclosures revealed that his household reported between $3.9 million and $13.4 million in assets when he left the Biden White House in January 2025. The former Biden aide also reported nearly 60 trades in funds and securities during 2023 while earning a $155,000 government salary. Massachusetts state Rep. Tram Nguyen, one of Koh’s Democratic rivals, seized on the report to demand greater financial transparency from candidates seeking public office.
Koh served as chief of staff to Biden Labor Secretary Marty Walsh before moving into the White House in August 2022. He worked as deputy cabinet secretary and later as deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Koh subsequently entered the race for Massachusetts’ heavily Democratic 6th Congressional District after incumbent Rep. Seth Moulton launched a Senate campaign.
The reported household asset range includes Koh’s wife’s income and assets, a family trust, and real estate holdings located across nine states. Financial disclosures provide values in broad ranges, meaning the documents don’t establish Koh’s exact net worth or prove by themselves that he personally earned the entire amount while serving in government. They nevertheless showed substantial investment activity during his tenure and sparked criticism from Nguyen about the rules governing financial transactions by executive-branch officials.
The Reading Observer reported that Nguyen released a statement after the findings became public. “Public service is a sacred responsibility,” Nguyen said before arguing that government officials and their families should not be permitted to profit from access to sensitive information. She called for loopholes covering Congress, executive-branch officials, political appointees, and their families to be closed, adding bluntly, “Washington is broken.”
The reported trades included investments in funds and securities associated with artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and clean energy. According to a subsequent review of the disclosures, Koh purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 in the Global X Future Analytics Tech ETF several months after Biden signed an October 30th, 2023, executive order promoting artificial-intelligence development. The fund’s price nearly doubled during the following year and a half, according to the report’s review of SEC records.
Koh’s disclosures also listed between $50,001 and $100,000 in the cryptocurrency Solana, which increased approximately 700% between the two reporting periods examined. His family trust, which has existed since 1997, reported investments valued between $200,000 and $450,000 on his termination disclosure. The report characterized that figure as a substantial increase from the value listed when Koh entered the White House in 2022.
Koh’s campaign denied that he traded individual company stocks while working for Biden and stressed that the disclosures contained no evidence of insider trading or other misconduct. “Dan did not buy or sell any individual stocks while serving in the White House,” campaign manager Olivia Brandon said. She said Koh sold individual holdings identified by ethics officials and moved his investments into ETFs and mutual funds managed by an outside financial adviser under guidance from the White House Ethics Office. The disclosures showed that Koh filed the required paperwork and technically complied with federal law.
"*" indicates required fields
The campaign also argued that the broader stock market rose by more than 50% during Koh’s two years in government. Koh has said he would support prohibiting members of Congress from trading individual stocks if elected. Nguyen, who released five years of her tax returns and challenged the other candidates to do the same, answered by declaring, “My opponents shouldn’t have any trouble meeting this minimum transparency standard.”
Watch Trump call out Pelosi for stock trading corruption here: