[ April 18, 2024 ]
Good. Now what about Pelosi?
REMOVE Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr After Coronovirus Insider Trading Scandal
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The Los Angeles Times first reported Wednesday night that federal agents had obtained Burr’s phone, indicating a major escalation of the Justice Department investigation.
A senior Department of Justice official confirms that the search warrant for Burr’s phone was actually served on his attorney. But the official says the phone itself needed to be picked up by FBI agents at Burr’s home but that there was not a “raid” on the senator’s residence. Agents took possession of the cell phone and then left Burr’s home.
https://twitter.com/PamelaGeller/status/1260757826244403200
Sen. Richard Burr steps down as Intelligence chairman amid FBI probe over stock sales
The North Carolina Republican faced calls to resign after he reportedly warned donors privately of the dire impact of the pandemic in February while selling off up to $1.6 million in stocks.
Sen. Richard Burr steps down as Intelligence chairman amid FBI probe over stock sales
The North Carolina Republican faced calls to resign after he reportedly warned donors privately of the dire impact of the pandemic in February while selling off up to $1.6 million in stocks.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., temporarily stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the FBI opened an investigation into possible insider trading.Burr faced pressure to step aside as head of the powerful committee after the FBI seized his cellphone as part of a search warrant in the investigation, senior law enforcement official confirmed to NBC News.
“Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step aside as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of the investigation. We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day tomorrow,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday.
The Los Angeles Times first reported Wednesday night that federal agents had obtained Burr’s phone, indicating a major escalation of the Justice Department investigation.
A senior Department of Justice official confirms that the search warrant for Burr’s phone was actually served on his attorney. But the official says the phone itself needed to be picked up by FBI agents at Burr’s home but that there was not a “raid” on the senator’s residence. Agents took possession of the cell phone and then left Burr’s home.
That same official says the search warrant was approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department, meaning Attorney General William Barr signed off on executing the warrant.
A spokesman for Burr declined to comment Wednesday. A spokesperson for the Justice Department also declined to comment on The Times story.Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, faced calls to resign in March after reports that he privately warned well-connected donors of the dire impact of the coronavirus pandemic in February while selling off up to $1.6 million of his own stocks.
Burr said in March that he relied on public news reports, not inside information from his role on the Senate committee.
He said he asked the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee “to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency.”
Alice Fisher, a lawyer who is advising Burr, said in a statement in March:
“The law is clear that any American — including a senator — may participate in the stock market based on public information, as Senator Burr did. When this issue arose, Senator Burr immediately asked the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a complete review, and he will cooperate with that review as well as any other appropriate inquiry. Senator Burr welcomes a thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate.”
Burr has previously announced he will not seek re-election. He was re-elected in 2016, and the next election for his seat is in 2022.The furor began after ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, reported that Burr unloaded the stock around mid-February, about a week before the market started to plunge because of coronavirus concerns.
That included selling off up to $150,000 worth of shares in Wyndham Hotels and Resorts and $100,000 of shares in another hotel chain, Extended Stay America.
ProPublica discovered, and NBC News has confirmed, the stock sell-offs in Burr’s publicly available financial disclosure reports. The exact figures are unclear because the reports offer ranges of transactions.
Disclosure records also show that three other senators sold major holdings around the same time: Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., according to The New York Times.
Loeffler has defended the sales, saying that “investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisers without my or my husband’s knowledge or involvement.” Her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
A Feinstein spokesman in March said that the senator did not sell any stock and that “the transactions you’re referencing were made by her spouse.”
The spokesman said all of Feinstein’s assets are in a blind trust, and it’s been that way since she came to the Senate in 1992.
Burr was elected to the House in 1994 and served five terms before being elected to the Senate in 2004.
Burr, 64, told reporters before being re-elected to his third term in 2016 that if he won, he would not run for a fourth term.
Burr, while a Republican, has occasionally taken actions that have angered some of the more fervent supporters of President Donald Trump.A recently released bipartisan investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee validated a January 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment that described Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election, calling that assessment accurate, thorough and untainted by political bias.
“The committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions,” Burr said in a statement at the time of the report’s release in April. That report by the Republican-run committee examines how the assessment was put together.
On Wednesday night, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a vocal defender of Trump, tweeted about the investigation, using the term “stock selloff collusion.”
Gaetz also retweeted a comment from the right-wing media figure Mike Cernovich who wrote that Burr “tormented prominent Trump supporters,” including Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Trump Jr. was subpoenaed by Burr’s committee in 2019 to answer questions about his past contention that he had only limited knowledge of a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Pete Williams reported from Washington, and Phil Helsel from Los Angeles.
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8 Comments
3 years ago
Senator Burr was not the only member of congress that sold off large quantities of stock before the market crash. You do not hear one word about the democRATS in congress that did the same.
3 years ago
Reply to
Navy_Vet
You’re right about the selective prosecutions/persecutions, where Democrats never seem to pay the same price as Republicans, but I don’t let him off the hook. The whole stinking place seems to be so corrupt that it is stunning. Who isn’t on the take? Who isn’t abusing their position? Who isn’t betraying the people? The list is very short.
3 years ago
Will Feinsten and Pelosi be stepping down soon with their insider trading ?
Pelois set up her husband’s business with insider legislation and government contracts. It has been going on for DECADES!
Peter Schweizer: Sens. Burr, Feinstein, Loeffler Dumped Stock Before
Coronavirus Market Collapse
ROBERT KRAYCHIK 30 Mar 2020
Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) sold millions of dollars of stock ahead of the coronavirus-related market collapse, said Peter Schweizer, senior contributor to Breitbart News and author of Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite.
On Episode 15 of the Drill Down, Schweizer warns how members of Congress can use confidential information not available to the public, received through private briefings, to enrich themselves and their families.
Schweizer said, “According to their financial disclosures, Republican Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler, along with Democrat Diane Feinstein, all sold large amounts of stock in advance of the stock market collapse. Many of these transactions occurred shortly after Congress was briefed behind closed doors by U.S. officials on the potential impact the coronavirus could have on the country.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation of Burr’s sale of upwards of $1.72 million in stock, according to a CNN report.
Unlike Burr, who admitted to selling stock himself ahead of the stock market dives, Feinstein’s and Loeffler’s stock sales were executed by their husbands. Schweizer said:
Senator Kelly Loeffler, who is married to the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, also sits on the Senate Health committee. On January 24th, the same day that Senate Committee received a briefing about the spread of the global pandemic, Loeffler and her husband began selling stock. They eventually unloaded 3 million worth of shares in 27 separate transactions. Two days after the Senate received a classified briefing on the coronavirus, Loeffler’s husband Jeffrey Sprecher sold $3.5 million dollars worth of his own company’s stock.
Senator Diane Feinstein’s financial disclosures expose a similar trend. Within weeks of receiving a private Senate briefing, Feinstein’s husband unloaded between one and five million dollars worth of stock.
Even U.S. House members got in on the action, with California Representative Susan Davis selling airline and cruise industry stock in advance of the stock market collapse.
Despite suggesting their assets are managed in blind trusts, both Feinstein and Loeffler do not place their assets in blind trusts.
Schweizer has repeatedly recommended mandatory use of blind trusts for the assets of members of Congress and other elected officials to combat insider trading based on confidential information not available to the public.
“There are still dozens of U.S. Senators who have yet to disclose any trades they might have made in the same time period,” added Schweizer.
Schweizer reflected on his 2011 book, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of us to Prison, and subsequent passage of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, known as the STOCK Act.
“[Throw Them All Out] exposed the alarming patterns by which members of Congress’s stock portfolios were outperforming the nation’s top hedge funds.,” Schweizer concluded. “Sadly, the recent activities of Congress show that, even in times of the most unimaginable crisis, our nation’s health still takes a backseat to Washington’s wealth.”
…
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/30/peter-schweizer-sens-burr-feinstein-loeffler-dumped-stock-before-coronavirus-market-collapse/
3 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
Pelosi, Brown, Newsom, Feinstein are names in a California political/financial cabal going back to a time before Nancy was born. For now they get by. But this is still coming…
Judgment.
3 years ago
I am a firm believer anyone in congress who uses their position and influence to gain wealth and is convicted of doing so should get 50 years in Leavenworth with no possibility of parole. I am so sick of politicians who care absolutely about nothing but their own power, prestige, and wealth. I don’t care which party they belong to.
3 years ago
Reply to
rangerrebew
It MUST be put into a BLIND TRUST!
Our respresentatives have taken dishonesty to a new level.
3 years ago
Thats what i say – i’m not holding my breath –
3 years ago
Only a politicized FBI would investigate what is obviously not a crime. Burr traded on publicly available information. There is no distinction between the editor of a newspaper who receives the news first and a reader of the paper the next day. Its public and not purloined from an inside source.
