It’s not just that he sold stocks. He also used his public position to publicly down-play the seriousness of the crisis, at a time we know, now, for a fact, that he knew it was much more serious. That’s clearly an attempt to manipulate the market - deny the public good information long enough for him to get his money out, and screw everyone else. He abused his public trust to enrich himself.
Flogging’s too good for this rat bastard.
Burr claims he only used public information to sell. I think there is no way to prove or disprove that .
Would there be a special election in November, assuming a resignation?
Oh, man - that’s smart! I don’t know why no one else in the history of insider trading has ever thought of that defense!
[DiplomacyFilterAtMax]This seems to qualify as an Ethics violation… [/DiplomacyFilterAtMax]
Yes there would be a special election on Nov. if Burr quits now. Which means both NC Senate seats would be on the ballot. The other one is incumbent Tillis ® vs. Cal Cunnigham who won the Dem primary super Tues
Do you know what the cutoff is? When would Burr have to resign / his successor take office by in order to trigger a special election in the fall? I don’t know how the D bench is looking in NC these days, but I think they’d have to have a shot there.
Tom Tillis, our other (endangered) Republican senator, has called for Burr to give a full accounting. He is not planning to join his colleague under the bus.
Whether or not he’s committed insider trading, though, it looks like he purposefully deceived the public about whether the US was fully prepared for this crisis. That is, in my mind, a far greater evil.
As I understand it, Loeffler claims that her (and her husband’s) investments are in a blind trust and the decision is made without their knowledge (specifically neither of their knowledge).
Feinstein is saying that her assets are in a blind trust, but that the investment decisions at issue were made by her husband without her input. So, I think, a significant portion of Feinstein’s sales were intentionally made by her husband (whatever the implications of that).
Inhofe (who was also implicated, although at a much smaller scale than the others, I think – $400k vs. Feinstein’s $6 million) claims that the sales were part of an ongoing effort (since late 2018) to move all of his assets from stocks into mutual funds and he has no knowledge of any of the details of the transactions.
I don’t think it would be unreasonable to make Loeffler and Inhofe “prove” their lack of control (although I don’t know how you would do that).
Burr does not appear to have any real explanation (or excuse).
He’s probably pissed that he didn’t get tipped off.
Agreed, and I think the same would apply to Feinstein. As for how you’d prove it, I’d like the senators and their financial advisors/brokers to face law enforcement interviews about the details of any sales and any conversations they had with one another prior to those sales. If there are disparities, widen the investigation.
I had inside information but it did not impact my decision and I just happened to do act in a manner consistent with the inside information and not the information that I was publicly espousing is not a tenable position to hold.
Someone needs to explain to Burr how insider trading works.
Let’s say at 10 AM you read an article that has financial tips and decide to sell a stock based on that, but you don’t have time to call your broker because you have a 10:30 meeting you need to get to. You sit in the meeting and you learn about an impending pandemic that isn’t available to the public, and you need to start planning for the possibility of massive disruption. At noon you call your broker and sell your stock. It doesn’t matter that you had made the financial decision prior to learning insider info, and that the info didn’t influence the action you later took. It looks like it did, it’s even plausible that it did. As a result, you look guilty as hell and unless someone can read your mind you have no way to prove you weren’t. The prudent thing would have been to not act at all.
It’s the same reason judges recuse themselves from certain cases. Not because they can’t be fair in their judgement but they have no way to prove that whatever potential bias they have didn’t factor into the decision. All conflict of interest rules are based on that fact; it’s not whether or not you are guilty, but the appearance of guilt and inability to prove innocence will lead you to be treated as if you’re guilty.
I work in the public sector and that kind of thing is drilled into us. You’d think someone at his level would have this down.
I thought all “Insider Trading” is legal for all Congressional Representatives, the President and Federal Judges.
the real golden rule , he who has the gold makes the rules
STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge)
It hasn’t been legal since 2012. By the way, the law passed the Senate 96-3 and Burr was one of the three who voted against it.
Well, there you go: he voted against it, therefore it doesn’t apply to him. QED.
Anyway, what about Benghazi?
Mike Pesca, whom I tend to trust, is saying he didn’t have any confidential administration. But he has studied these issues closely, so he would be able to judge the danger more readily than your average bear.
How are we not calling this “Burrisma”?
I think Richard Burr is as corrupt a Republican as any of the rest of them, but when Tucker Carlson starts eagerly calling for a fellow dirt bag’s head on a platter, I can’t help but drift into Ulterior Motive territory.
Then I remembered that behind the scenes Burr, as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has resisted opening another investigation into Hunter Biden, telling his fellow Republicans that to do so is to play right into Putin’s hands.
Burr should be investigated, youbet. But perhaps calling for his resignation at this point may be premature. If you’re a realpolitik Democrat, that is.
#Burrisma has been getting a lot of play on Twitter, today.
There you go. Silently cashing in would have been deplorable. But deliberately misleading the public to facilitate gain: Censure would fall short of what’s called for, here. Expulsion then indictment sounds more reasonable.