Richard Burr, lawyering up.
He’s been hit with all kinds of bad publicity about his stock trades that coincided with special briefings he received as Intelligence Committee chairman. One investor has filed suit against him in federal court.
Now, it appears the US Justice Department as well as the Securities & Exchange Commission are looking into Burr’s investment activities:
The Justice Department has launched a probe into a series of stock transactions made by at least one senator just before the market saw a steep downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.
The investigation is being done in tandem with the Securities and Exchange Commission and has, thus far, reached out to Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), according to CNN.
As the outlet reports, it is commonplace for the FBI and SEC to investigate stock trades when there is public scrutiny of them.
Burr sparked bipartisan outrage over his sale of $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks just one week before the market crashed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At the time, Burr sat in confidential briefings on a near-daily basis on coronavirus and was publicly downplaying the threat of the soon-to-be pandemic in media appearances and op-eds he authored.
His investment decisions being made just prior to markets entering a tailspin led critics on both sides of the aisle to accuse him of enriching himself off a national economic crisis.
Burr has since said his stock sales were solely guided by public media reports about the rapidly spreading virus. He also said he had requested a Senate Ethics Committee review of his conduct.
In response to the probe, Burr’s lawyer Alice Fisher told The Post, “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,” she continued.
Burr’s attorney, Fisher, is a former deputy attorney general who ran the US DOJ’s criminal division. (Some of the most high-profile cases she was involved with included the prosecutions of Jack Abramoff and of Jeffrey Epstein.)
I am not sure he needs such a high powered lawyer. There is as much chance a swamp rat like Tricky Dick will get any type of punishment as any of the Obama administration traitors who did all the shenanigans against Trump. The swamp protects it’s own and Dick paid his dues by protecting the intelligence community so this is just a mock effort so the DOJ seems like it is actually doing something.
As bad as Burr’s insider stock deals are, his (and Tillis’s) betrayal of Tom Farr is much worse, in my opinion. Their refusal to support Farr demonstrates their moral failure and political cowardice. Both of them can’t be gone from the Senate soon enough.