27
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Senator Richard Burr dumped up to $1.6 million of stock after reassuring public about coronavirus preparedness
Link information
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- Authors
- Robert Faturechi,Derek Willis
- Published
- Mar 19 2020
- Word count
- 1099 words
From the article:
While I know this is U.S.-centric, I encourage Tilders in other countries to be observant about similar instances of unspeakable venality and abuse of public trust in their politics. I sincerely hope the memories of the public and the press are long enough to get these robbers evicted at the polls.
He's not the only one to profit off this.
It looks like you may have linked the same story twice? Is there another insider beneficiary besides Senator Loeffler? In any case, I'd love to see some prosecutions, and maybe a proper old-fashioned tar-and-feathering or two.
And the footnote to all this is a security meeting January 24 that caused these people to dump stock, when they couldn't be bothered to engage public health authorities widely or warn the public for a month. [Let's not even discuss our Fearless Leader, who couldn't be bothered to acknowledge the pandemic until March 15. Be interesting to know how his investments have changed, though the hotels are probably taking a beating.]
Different pieces of information on what is essentially the same story, yes.
Jesus. He needs to resign. This is completely and utterly unacceptable.
So is everything else in American politics recently, it doesn't seem to matter anymore.
Even basic decorum is no longer a thing in politics like it used to be. I remember how much the public made fun of W's public speaking skills, but damn he sounds great when compared to the cheeto.
But he's a Republican. They actively encourage this behavior.
I believe the STOCK Act has something to say about that.
Senators were warned by the chair of the Intelligence committee about the potential effects of COVID-19 a while back: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19
And, who's going to enforce the act, or manage a successful prosecution?
The STOCK Act has already been diluted, the Congressional Ethics Committee didn't pursue investigation or censure [PDF warning] a Representative who was later convicted under SEC securities fraud and insider trading laws. The history is illuminating.
To date, no Senator has been prosecuted for prior violations, and the current Justice Department seems unlikely to investigate.
The current Democrat-led House of Representatives has genuine reform legislation pending Senate review, but this mess isn't going to be cleaned up until the coronavirus crisis is past and Republicans are (hopefully) voted out of office.
Yeah I'm under no illusion that he's going to face consequences, but it's still interesting that not only were his actions unethical, they were also most likely illegal.
Edit: Thanks for all the links backing up your statements.
The chair of the intelligence committee is Richard Burr, the subject of the article.
It also mentions that he was one of only three senators that opposed the STOCK Act.
Welp, I missed that both articles were about the same guy. Interesting.
And yeah, it's no wonder that senators would vote against legislation that is intended to keep them from acting unethically.
Someone needs to investigate what else he's been doing since February 13. That's really early.
Edit: I mean, imagine if he'd sold all this stock, and then announced that he had done so, and explained why. If you're shorting the market, isn't that's what you're supposed to do? It would send a very loud message to pay attention to this. If he'd done that then I'd say it was worth whatever money he made on it.