FBI is investigating Senator Richard Burr of NC (updated)
I do not have a whole lot to write about this, but am including a video from Rising this morning on this story. Since the publication of the video below, Burr has resigned his position as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Burr came under fire in March when it was first disclosed that he and his wife made nearly three dozen stock trades worth between $628,000 and $1.7 million on a single day, February 13, representing a significant portion of his stock portfolio.
As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr has received classified briefings on the coronavirus outbreak in addition to closed-door briefings all senators had access to as the virus spread.
Using insider knowledge to profit from stock trading is illegal under the law. It is often difficult to discern if such trades were made based upon insider information.
Congress passed the Stock Act in 2012, which explicitly made it illegal for members of Congress to trade stocks with inside information. There's no public evidence that Burr broke the law or violated Senate rules with the trades.
What I find interesting is that Burr is a long time Republican senator who sits as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Along with several other members of Congress, Burr dumped large quantities of stock right before the corona virus pandemic hit the US. The fact that he is a Republican and this investigation is occurring during a Republican administration is significant.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3U8H025yc]
Update: Now Diane Feinstein is being interviewed by the FBI over her husband's stock trades.
Her husband, Richard Blum, is an investment banker who reportedly sold his shares in a biotech company in January before the coronavirus crisis sent the stock market into a tailspin. The transaction was reported in Feinstein’s routine Senate financial disclosure forms, and her spokesman said at the time the senator has no involvement in her husband’s stock trades.
snip
The New York Times first reported that the FBI had reached out to Feinstein. Another lawmaker who has faced scrutiny over her stock trades, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), declined to answer questions Thursday about whether she has been contacted by the FBI.
More on Burr and Loeffler in this article. Whether or not any criminal charges come from this, I am glad to see that the public is learning more about it from mainstream media.
Burr’s warnings were reflected in his personal behavior as well. In a single day on Feb. 13, he dumped his stock portfolio in 33 separate transactions, unloading close to $1.7 million of stock holdings in hotels and other industries, a little more than a week before those same stock values collapsed.
Turns out that Burr wasn’t the only senator bailing out of the stock market just in the nick of time. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., also sold off substantial stock holdings after a closed Jan. 24 briefing with health and intelligence officials. Loeffler denies any wrongdoing.
If anyone believes that these people were not engaged in illegal trading, I have a bridge to nowhere that I would like to sell you.
Comments
Good
Too many congress members have gotten filthy rich off insider trading for far too long. Even if they didn't do it by getting insider trading information like Burr, the woman who's name starts with LOE.... and Diane Feinstein they certainly did it by knowing which industry just got a big fat paycheck from the government. And this is especially true for when defense industries get them. Feinstein looks extremely guilty of this because her husband also got many of the contracts. But she isn't guilty of profiting off insider knowledge even though she sat in on the same meeting and dumped her stocks at the same time Burr did. Why? Reasons of course and that she is a democrat and they are always above the law. Why? Tribalism.
But sadly some people think that Trump is going after Burr because he agrees that Russia helped get Trump elected. Putin told Trump to go after him. Putin also told him to drop the charges against Flynn. Russia Gate will never die unless Rachel admits to them that she lied her buttocks off about the Russia Gate saga for 3 years and now she has to clear her conscience because she profited of lying to them.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Why Burr?
I am not sure why Burr is the one (or perhaps the first one) that the FBI is investigating. I do not have a link, but I seem to remember that Burr was the one who dumped the largest amounts of stock and made the most money while publicly proclaiming that no one needed to worry about the pandemic.
I do not doubt that others were also engaged in illegal trading, Loeffler, in particular whose husband is the CEO of Intercontinental Exchange. You cannot make this stuff up. They all are so overt about it all.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I would refer you to
Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse (but I have trouble copying links when on my phone.) But I think the gist of Sundance's specuation is that Burr is a key player in the Russiagate effort to destroy Trump and that Burr's vulnerability here may incentivize him to open up about that.
Good ole Neera
Does anybody know if Neera had a problem when the FBI did the same thing to Roger Stone? At least CNN wasn’t there to film it.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
One would hope Justice would ignore party affiliation,
for a change, but one must always assume that there is a driving current left out of the story. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised at our judicial systems impartiality, but not very often these days. Operating from higher principals rather than partisanship is becoming increasingly rare.
Profit is in charge, sadly.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
I agree
That there may be something more behind the scenes that we do not know of yet and may never know of.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
You ask for the impossible, snoopy
Asking Rachel Madcow* to admit she was wrong is as hopeless as getting H. Rodent Clinton* to admit she was wrong.
*Nomenclature to be clarified for uninformed readers and those without a sense of the absurd.
Sen. Loeffler says her stock were in a blind trust
Blind trust, my butt. She effing knew quite well when SARS2 was gonna hit the good ol' US of A.
I have a picture of Sen. Loeffler's agent making blind trust purchases and sales:
Government is chock full
with crooked bastards, eh?
I am both shocked and dismayed.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
good to hear difi and blum are being 'investigated'
too. remember: he was the bastard who profited from the sales of myriad post offices when the PO was going broke and closing offices, and the ones that featured the giant and wonderful WPA-project murals must have fetched a pretty penny.
yeah, the next stim bill will #SavethePostOffice. although when i'd read that pelosi wanted $25 billion for the PO (chicken feed), trump wanted reform. (and he gets to appoint a new postmaster general in june). but one thing he said he wanted was for the PO to charge a higher rate on Amazon's packages. on that i agree with him.
sorry to go OT, gulfgal. thanks for bringing this news.
from wsws.org:
‘US Senator Richard Burr steps down as intelligence chairman amid investigation into pre-pandemic stock dump’, By Jacob Crosse, 15 May 2020, wsws.org
it's long, but chock full of background on burr, et.al., most of which i hadn't known. too many noteworthy excerpts to bring any.
@wendy davis I had read most of it
I had read most of it elsewhere except for the part about Burr's BIL. The FBI stated that Burr was the first to be investigated because there was more to investigate. It will be interesting to see if he walks.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy