He’s not running for re-election in 2022
You buried the lede a bit - it was Richard Burr, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who was getting daily classified briefings on the status and progress of Covid 19 weeks before the big shutdowns started to happen.
Foolishness. And an alarming lack of faith in The Donald, who is on the case. And did he really imagine that the all-important hospitality industry would be orphaned without aid? Or was he so dumb that he failed to invest in hotels with immediate proximity to golf courses?
Run for re-election? He should run for cover.
There’s a Pitthread on this in case you want to say something rude.
Burr’s voice was recorded. And wouldn’t you know it,
Before people salivate, it’s not a Dem pickup, NC has to appoint a same party replacement. Most likely it’ll be a placeholder that has no intent to run in 2022. I’d suggest Elizabeth Dole, but she’s too old.
“Salivate”? Why does that ring a bell?
I wonder if the money he saved by selling early will be enough to offset his legal costs?
I wonder how much the Trump family dumped?
A real sleazebag, but it shows that more broadly, government officials should not be able to buy and sell stocks outside of some kind of defined monthly contribution to an index fund. Even if you’re not as scummy as Burr, the temptation to act would be high if you knew you might be facing financial ruin.
Insider trading is a capital offense in some places. Maybe not directly, but tragic suicides occur, alas. Are US Senators routinely frisked or run through metal detectors?
Not enough to pay back their Russian owners, apparently.
timeout dupe
Sen. Kelly Loeffler from Georgia also dumped a lot of stock
You’re assuming facts not in evidence. Do you think he’ll resign and be prosecuted?
And to show that it’s not only GOP senators who do this, Dianne Feinstein is also listed as selling off stock.
The whole lot of them should resign.
New articles report that three senators sold stocks before the crash: Feinstein, Loeffler, and Burr. Feinstein and Leoffler say that their assets are held in blind trusts, so an investment manager makes decisions without consulting them. I think without further evidence that they somehow violated the blind trust, it probably isn’t fair to criticized them personally for selling assets, when they likely had no idea what was going on.
Notably, Burr does not seem to be claiming that his assets were in a blind trust.
In the immortal words of Rick Perry, “Oops.”
Loeffler is gonna need a better explanation for buying stock in Citrix while simultaneously dumping her other stock. Until she provides that, the most likely explanation is that she was involved in those decisions.
Anyone could have sold stock before the market crash. It wasn’t like COVID19 was some big secret that only Senators knew about. Unless they were dealing with some inside information, or purposefully legislated to make the plague outcome worse, I don’t see where the problem is.
About that stock that Feinstein’s husband sold off: Barrons reports that it was her husband that sold off biotech stock.
. Biotech stock is something one would want to invest in if one thought a pandemic was possible, but
If this was “insider trading”, it was the worst in history.
“As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.”
"Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus. "