Statutorily cap SEC investigations at two years

Research notes

• The instrument would be an amendment to the Securities Exchange Act — a statutory deadline on investigations. bills.ndjson was grepped for investigation, Securities and Exchange, SEC , enforcement and Due Process: nothing in the 119th Congress imposes a time limit on SEC investigations. H.R. 9329, the SEC Reform and Restructuring Act (ordered reported 2026-06-30), was read in full (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr9329ih/html/BILLS-119hr9329ih.htm): “two years” appears zero times and its two uses of “investigation” are in the GAO IT audit section.
• Federal Register full text, SEC only, since 2025-01-20: no rule, proposed rule or notice addresses the duration of investigations. The Commission’s whole active Unified Agenda (42 RINs, reginfo.gov, 2026 publication) has no such entry.
• Adjacent but not the ask: the 2025-03-14 final rule eliminating the delegation to the Director of the Division of Enforcement to issue formal orders of investigation (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/14/2025-04064/delegation-of-authority-to-director-of-the-division-of-enforcement) changes who opens an investigation, not how long one may run. It is Evidence on #2149, not here.
• The wall is gone and the internal-practice half was searched (2026-09-03, read-queue ticket 04). sec.gov opens to the full browser header set. No internal Enforcement timeline policy exists anywhere on it — not in the complete report index (https://www.sec.gov/reports, read 2026-09-03, dated entries 2023 to 2026-09-02), not in the Office of Inspector General’s complete Audit, Evaluation, and Other Reports index (https://www.sec.gov/office-inspector-general/reports-publications/audit-evaluation-other-reports), and not in the FY2027 Congressional Budget Justification. The nearest thing on the record is OIG Report No. 576 (2023-02-15), Enforcement Investigations: Measures of Timeliness Showed Some Improvement But Enforcement Can Better Communicate Capabilities for Expediting Investigations and Improve Internal Processes — pre-window, and it describes measurement, not a cap. The earlier note’s caveat that this negative is “silent on internal practice” can be retired: the practice was searched and there is no policy.
• Moved nearby, and on the wrong clock. The Commission’s Rule 900 reports on administrative proceedings (read 2026-09-03, cited on #2148) show median age at initial decision falling from 194 to 82 days and every in-window initial decision meeting Rule 900’s ten-month guideline. That is the adjudication clock; the Quote is about the investigation clock. Recorded here as moved-nearby and deliberately not cited as Evidence, because it would invite the reader to read a guideline on decisions as a limit on investigations.