In the final weeks of the Republican primary election race for Utah’s open U.S. Senate seat, Trent Staggs has raised the temperature in the race by pointing a finger at front-runner Rep. John Curtis for allegedly using his position in Congress to make well-timed stock trades.
A review of public meetings and financial disclosure by The Salt Lake Tribune found that Staggs used his position as an elected official to help secure a business deal and bolster his company’s bona fides in public disclosures.
Just over a year after defeating the longtime incumbent mayor of Riverton, a city tucked in a fast-growing corner of the Salt Lake Valley, Staggs stood in front of the group that oversees the use of Utah’s trust lands to benefit public schools.
Staggs made a business pitch at the March 2019 meeting as part of his day job as a consultant for Vivakor, and pointed to his new position as a reason the State Institutional Trust Lands Administration Board of Trustees should have confidence in his spiel and grant a lease to his client.
“I’m an elected official in the state,” Staggs told the trustees. “I’m very vested in this community, and our company is as well.”
The soil remediation company for which Staggs was working, where he would later become a director, wanted to establish a tar sands mine atop the Book Cliffs of southern Uintah County.
The trustees unanimously agreed to rent over 1,400 acres to the company’s subsidiary, Vivaventures Oil Sands, for 10 years at an annual rate of $1 per acre and an 8% production royalty.
The company announced the lease five days later. And that July, a limited liability company that provides investor relations services for corporations paid $180,000 to The Wolf of Penny Stocks for a one-week campaign advertising Vivakor’s deal with the state agency to potential investors, according to a marketing email obtained by The Tribune.
But Vivakor, which wouldn’t be publicly traded for until a few years later, never followed through with the agreement, and the more than 1,400 acres soon became available for another lessee.
A spokesperson for SITLA confirmed to The Tribune that Vivakor “did not make any payment whatsoever that would have made the lease active.”
Staggs ultimately ended up profiting from his consulting efforts, a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission before Vivakor went public in 2022 indicates. The form says the Riverton mayor received $84,704 and $48,605 in 2019 and 2020 “as payment for consulting services.”
Staggs’ campaign did not respond to a request for an interview from The Tribune or to questions sent to the campaign via email.
Municipal officials are barred by Utah law from using their position “to further substantially the officer’s or municipal employee’s personal economic interest.”
It’s unclear whether Staggs’ actions were ever investigated. The punishment for violating the law is removal from office and a 2nd degree felony if the compensation exceeds $1,000
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill’s office did not respond to questions about whether his office ever received a complaint about Staggs’ use of his elected title in business activities or if the district attorney office ever investigated the mayor.
“The state of Utah doesn’t have really strong laws in that area,” said Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at the University of Utah. “Part of that is for practical purpose. There are a fair number of people … who are only part-time elected officials”
He explained, “And so I think that’s one of the reasons why there’s never been a strong attempt to say, ‘Here’s the dividing line between being in private business and being an elected official.’”
Last fiscal year Staggs was paid $41,712.68, with $28,332.83 in benefits, for serving as mayor, according to the state’s transparency website. When he began his first term, he was making approximately $21,000.
Using a mayoral title in business pursuits “is probably not something you should do,” Burbank said. “The reality [in Utah], however, is in most cases the remedy for that is to have voters not elect a person.”
(Rick Bowmer | AP) U.S. Rep. John Curtis, left, reacts to a statement made by Trent Staggs, right, following the Utah Senate primary debate for Republican contenders battling to win the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney Monday, June 10, 2024, in Salt Lake City.
Vivakor donated office space for Staggs’ Salt Lake County mayoral campaign in 2020, according to a financial disclosure submitted to the county in March of that year. In September — less than two months before he lost to Democratic Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson — Staggs was hired as a director of Vivakor.
A paragraph describing his background in the SEC filing says: “Mr. Staggs is also the Mayor of Riverton, Utah and serves on many boards, providing needed political guidance and consultation to Vivakor and its related companies. Mr. Staggs is qualified to serve on our Board of Directors because of his extensive experience in capital markets and his understanding of Utah regulatory requirements.”
Two years after Staggs joined as director of the company, Vivakor was listed in the Nasdaq Stock Exchange — an accomplishment the Senate candidate boasts about on his campaign website. When Vivakor went public, it reported Staggs owned 336,667 shares in the company.
According to financial disclosures Staggs submitted to the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Ethics in compliance with the Ethics in Government Act, the candidate still holds stock in the company — valued between a quarter and half a million dollars, he reported — despite having left the Vivakor board of directors just before entering the race.
Staggs’ time on the board of directors was short-lived. He left the company in January 2023 — four months before filing to run for Senate and four months after Vivakor’s former CEO was charged by the SEC with securities fraud.
The new CEO of Vivakor, a Texan named James Ballengee, donated the maximum legal amount to Staggs’ Senate campaign in May. That is the only contribution Ballengee has made to a federal campaign this election cycle.
In the early April morning of the Utah GOP’s nominating convention, President Donald Trump endorsed Staggs, who went on to secure Republican delegates’ vote of approval. Staggs was the former president’s first endorsement in Utah this election cycle.
At a debate in the PBS Utah studio earlier this month in the lead-up to the Republican primary election, Staggs raised the temperature in the room when during his closing statement accused Curtis of insider trading.
“This is the problem in Congress,” Staggs said in the televised spar, continuing, “At a time when somebody should be looking out for their constituents, they end up looking out for their own profit. That’s why I’ve signed a contract with Utah — I want to ban the trading of individual stocks from members of Congress and their families. I also want to stop members of Congress from retiring and becoming lobbyists, and enriching themselves further.”
The “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker,” a social media account that tracks stock transactions by members of Congress, debunked Staggs’ claim. But it commended Staggs for the policy pledge he made.
“We still do need to give credit to Mayor Staggs for publicly stating he will push to ban political stock trading. We are here to help him make this happen in any way possible,” the account wrote on X.
