Posted on 03/20/2020 5:48:52 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Congress’s seamy underbelly floats up to the surface. – On his Fox News show last night, host Tucker Carlson lambasted Senator Richard Burr – chairman of the corrupt Senate Intelligence Committee – and demanded his resignation for off-loading millions of dollars in stock investments immediately after learning of the threat of the coronavirus.
Here’s a clip, followed by a transcript:
Acyn Torabi @Acyn Tucker Carlson calls for Senator Burr to resign and await prosecution for insider trading if he cannot provide a reasonable explanation for his actions. He goes on to say it appears that Senator Burr betrayed his country in a time of crisis
Embedded video
Transcript:
You may have seen the news reports this afternoon that the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee sold more than a million dollars in stock in mid-February after learning how devastating the Chinese coronavirus could be. He had inside information about what could happen to our country – which is now happening – but he didn’t warn the public. He didn’t give a prime-time address. He didn’t go on television to sound the alarm.
He didn’t even disavow the op/ed he’d written just 10 days before, claiming that America was “better prepared than ever for coronavirus.” He didn’t do any of those things. Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money, and then he stayed silent.
Now, maybe there’s an honest explanation for what he did; if there is, he should share it with the rest of us immediately. Otherwise, he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading. There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis, and that appears to be what happened.
[End]
Now, that’s all great: I have long been a critic of Burr, a useless RINO who has used his chairmanship of the Senate Intel Committee to literally cover up crimes committed against the Trump Campaign and Administration by the Obama-era coup cabal within the DOJ and the Intelligence Community. If he did engage in insider trading then he should resign and be prosecuted.
But let’s be honest here: If you think Burr is the only member of congress who has engaged in this kind of action over the past couple of months, you live in a fairy tale world.
The New York Times ran a report yesterday documenting similar actions by several other senators, including Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). That report is based on financial disclosure statements that members of congress must periodically file. Members are regularly tardy in filing these disclosures, and you can bet the shrinking balance in your 401(k) that we will soon discover that many more members did the same thing.
Some members, when they assume office, shield themselves from this kind of accusation by placing such investments in blind trusts, giving them the plausible deniability of saying that they take no active part in managing their investments. Inhofe, Feinstein and Loeffler all claim that is the case with their investments.
Interestingly, no one from Sen. Burr’s office has made a similar claim at this point. Here’s the statement his spokesperson put out yesterday evening:
“His message has always been, and continues to be, that we must be prepared to protect American lives in the event of a pandemic or bio-attack,” Caitlin Carroll, a spokeswoman for Mr. Burr, said in a statement. “Since early February, whether in constituent meetings or open hearings, he has worked to educate the public about the tools and resources our government has to confront the spread of coronavirus.”
Burr himself took to Twitter to issue a series of tweets about an NPR report covering a speech he made to a group of constituents in February, warning them of the potential impacts of coronavirus on the U.S. economy. Nowhere in those tweets does he attempt to defend his stock divestments.
If Burr does play an active role in managing his own trading, then this is a real problem for him, and helps to explain why Carlson went after him last night, but gave the others a pass.
That is all.
Utter Treason.
He was blowing smoke up the public’s ass while lining his own nest and telling the truth to his allies.
Call and leave a message for this profiteering traitor:
(202) 224-3154
“””””On his Fox News show last night, host Tucker Carlson lambasted Senator Richard Burr – chairman of the corrupt Senate Intelligence Committee “””””””””
No bias there.
Gee. Would anyone be shocked if you audited the portfolios of all the 435 members of the House, all of the 100 Senators and their wives, to find that many did the same thing?
who profits from this story?
Smearing Ron Johnson in an attempt to goose voting for WSSC for a Madison Loon April 7?
I could've sold out and the market kept rising, but it didn't happen that way.
I happened to win this one. The next one I may lose ...
I heard Feinstein did it too. Her hubby unloaded millions.
Burr? Loeffler and her husband should go to prison.
There goes Tucker again.
I don’t like to repost info I have posted on other threads but the market didn’t really fall until March. Everyone was aware before that this was going to be a bumpy ride with no definite end point.
The timing of the Congressional sales and the fact that it was a more general sale not one stock that the Congress critters had specific information on will make this a problematic action to classify as insider trading.
“who profits from this story?”
Looks like the only one profiting is traitor-Senator Burr,
who dumped his stock portfolio and told his friends to do
the same, while he was lying to the public about the
dangers of CV
Kelly Loeffler is claiming her stock portfolio is part of a blind trust and she had no input or knowledge of the sell off. This may be the case with others.
Not happening, no deep doo doo for Burr NOR a host of other Congress/Senate peeps who did likewise. Wanna bet? gg /s
The information he supposedly based his selling on was made public some days before he sold.
Although a shady and lousy thing to do, I don’t see the crime.
He was under no obligation to make a public announcement saying how bad this was going to get.
A number of FReepers bailed early too.
Claiming it when it is obviously untrue won;t help much. My guess is folks out here in flyover have had enough with DC corruption. And discovering it when the entire country is “in prison” isn’t gonna make people exactly “more understanding”. Time for the National Razor if the DOJ keeps dragging their feet.
These senators must take stupid pills every so often.
Why did they think they could get away with this?
But, he is not alone on this stock sell off.
Most of the swamp critters use insider information to line their pockets, whether it's stock knowledge, future construction projects, or any other way that information is fungible.
You don't think people spend millions to get a job that pays less than $200K/year?
$200,000 is good money, but most of the swamp dwellers are lawyers, doctors or business people, many of whom, have considerable earning power, way past $200K/year.
Many do it for the 'side knowledge benefits'.
How do you know it was “obviously untrue” when thousands of other were unloading stocks at the same time - that’s why the market went down?
I’m sorry— I’m not seeing anything wrong here. My understanding is he base his information on non-public information.
And his statement about the US being in a good position to weather the outbreak has nothing, in my opinion, to do with his positions on the stock market. Whether or not stocks go down is related to public perception, which is always fickle. The market’s recovery after, on the other hand, is related to the US’s good position.
What the Senator did is prudent, certainly not nefarious.
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