A Republican senator who helps oversee military policy just sold up to $100,000 worth of defense contractor Lockheed Martin stock

• GOP Sen. Deb Fischer just sold between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor.
• Fischer is currently the top Republican on a subcommittee that oversees missile defense.

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, who is the leading Republican on a Senate subcommittee overseeing missile defense, just reported selling all of her stock in Lockheed Martin Corporation, a defense contractor that manufactures numerous military weapons systems.

According to Fischer's financial disclosure filed July 20, she sold between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in Lockheed Martin on June 23. As Insider's Kimberly Leonard previously reported, Fischer inherited between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stocks from her mother when she died in December 2021.

Per the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, members of Congress are only required to report the values of their stock holdings and trades in broad values, making the exact value of Fischer's stock unknown.

But Fischer appears to have profited from her sale of Lockheed Martin stock, which has risen in value during the past half year.

If, for example, Fischer's Lockheed Martin shares were worth exactly $50,000 when she inherited them from her late mother on December 26, they would have been worth around $60,000 when she sold them in late June, according to Insider's analysis of congressional financial filings and Lockheed Martin stock values.

"As your last story on this topic notes, this stock originates from the passing of Sen. Fischer's mother late last year," Fischer spokesman Nathaniel Sizemore said in an email Wednesday. "Sen. Fischer had no intention of retaining these assets, and this was part of that process."

Congress bullish on defense stocks

Fischer was one of 20 members of Congress who owned stock in Lockheed Martin or Raytheon Technologies in May 2022 when President Joe Biden signed a bill allotting $40 billion in aid and defense to Ukraine, which included weapons systems from the two defense contractors.

Since then, other members of Congress have likewise traded defense contractor stocks, including Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican of Oklahoma, who supports increases in military spending.

Lockheed Martin, along with Raytheon, manufactures the Javelin anti-tank missile system, which Ukraine has used widely to defend itself against Russian invaders.

Defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin together spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying the federal government to prod elected officials, shape policy, and win lucrative government contracts. During 2021, Lockheed Martin alone spent more than $14.4 million, according to federal lobbying records compiled by nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.

Similarly, the company's political action committee makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to federal lawmakers' campaigns each year, contributing to several dozen in June alone, according to new disclosures filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.

Fischer's Lockheed Martin stock sale comes at a time when members of Congress are debating whether federal lawmakers and their immediate family members should even be allowed to trade individual stocks at all.