if he uses the words "no controlling legal authority" - let us know.
Or was he baking cookies?
At least he is out front of the media FReight train early ...
He's in a Catch-22 either way, using wanting to eliminate conflict of interest as the basis for selling as he did.. regardless the delays that are involved in exercising the sale..
his fault? hardly
No surprise here the appearance of impropriety is what the media will use, rather than the 'truth' after the fact.
Frist is not on my A list, but that doesn't mean I think he should be treated unfairly.
No use forcing him to resign .. he's resigning from the senate in 2006 - and Mitch McConnell is set to replace him.
Sounds like an attorney hound dogging for national attention/publicity.
Sen. Frist sells HCA stock; then price falls Sept. 21, 2005 MIKE MADDEN STAFF
Aide says he couldn't control timing; move may temper conflict-of-interest concerns
By MIKE MADDEN Tennessean Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist sold his stock in HCA Inc., the Nashville-based hospital chain his family founded, shortly before the stock took almost a 9% dive in mid-July. The sale helps minimize allegations that he has a conflict of interest on health-care issues as he considers a run for president. Frist's brother, Thomas, is a former chief executive officer and current director of the company. Frist spokeswoman Amy Call said the senator had no knowledge of when the stock actually sold. He requested the sale June 13, but the execution of the sale was up to the blind trust that manages his holdings.
"Frist had no control over when the stocks were sold. The trustee could have chosen to hold them or sell at any time. Also, we don't know when the stock was sold, only when we were notified."
She said Frist was notified of sales on July 1 and July 8.
An HCA spokesman said the company had no part in Frist's decision.
"He never had any relationship to the company to begin with. ... He never even practiced here," said HCA spokesman Jeff Prescott, who added that the Nashville-based company has had no legislative relationship with the majority leader. "We specifically never lobby him."
Until the sale, Frist, his wife and their three sons owned an undisclosed amount of HCA stock in blind trusts. On July 13, HCA warned shareholders that second-quarter earnings would fall short of Wall Street's expectations. The company's shares fell 8.8% that day.
A California-based watchdog group, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, had complained to the Senate Ethics Committee last year that Frist's holdings posed a conflict because of his support for legislation limiting medical-malpractice lawsuits, which could benefit HCA and its subsidiaries if it passed.
The Ethics Committee dismissed that complaint because the Tennessee Republican never worked for HCA, but his office said he chose to sell the stock anyway.
"There was no compelling reason for him to do it because it's not a conflict," Call said. "He wanted to ensure that in the future there were no appearance issues. He went ahead and just decided that it was the best thing to do."
Frist is considering a run for the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination, and some observers suggested Monday that selling the stock was designed to head off scrutiny of his relationship with HCA during the primary campaign.
"This is preemptive damage control for his presidential campaign," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "It should have been done when he first started working on legislation that impacted the company."
If he does run, the sale could help blunt attacks by GOP rivals, said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican operative. "He does remove a potential conflict, as well as a potential political problem. Managed care is not real popular, and he probably doesn't want to remind people of his association with it."
In his last annual personal financial disclosure statement, filed in May, Frist reported a net worth of $15 million-$45 million, mostly in blind trusts created when he entered politics in 1994. Senate ethics rules allowed him to direct the sale, even though he could not know how much HCA stock he still owned. The rules say he cannot be notified of how much money the sale made.
Frist's late father, Thomas Frist, founded the company in 1968.
His brother, Thomas Frist Jr., is still the largest shareholder, owning more than $271 million in stock. Government filings indicate Thomas Frist Jr. last sold HCA stock on March 7.
The company has posed a political problem for Frist for years. In 1999, U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., a Memphis Democrat then considering a challenge to Frist in the 2000 election, asked the Senate ethics panel to rule on the Republican's holdings. It found no conflict. HCA employees and its political-action committee have given Frist $83,450 -- more money in campaign contributions over his career than any other donor, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group. But although Frist's position on medical malpractice changes prompted last year's ethics complaint from the California group, major physician groups such as the American Medical Association also have pressed the majority leader -- a former heart and lung transplant surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center -- to push that legislation. Under Senate rules, lawmakers can support legislation that would benefit themselves or their family, as long as it has a broad impact on the rest of the nation.
Pay backs are hell....I bet Lott is smiling.
He is, after all, a politician....I'm going to go ahead and assume he's guilty. Sound investor my a$$.
HCA paid $745 million to the Federal government to settle a fraud charge. The CEO was a Frist, brother or father to Bill.
Insider trading has always been difficult to define. Sure, there are technical requirements, but the justice of a particular case is often hard to see.
It's very doubtful that Frist committed a crime, but he gave the media an opening simply by owning stock. Only Democrats are allowed to get away with owning stock. Like Al Gore and all that oil stock you never heard about.
I'd like to see proof of wrongdoing other than demonrat complaints.
Frist was toast long ago, but he just keeps pounding nail after nail after nail into gis own coffin.
As Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) faces probes on whether his blind trust was really blind, the Democrats' Senate leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is placing all of his assets into a blind trust, Roll Call reports in Monday editions.
Reid, who was worth at least $2 million at the end of last year, is setting up a financial arrangement akin to the one being run by his counterpart, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), whose decision to tell his trust to sell stock from his family’s hospital chain has prompted a dual-track federal investigation.
While the paperwork has not been finalized on Reid’s trust, the Minority Leader said that having a financial arrangement in which he wouldn’t know which stocks or other publicly traded assets were being bought and sold would avoid any appearance of conflict on his voting and leadership decisions.
Reid said he already had begun the process of establishing a blind trust when asked about the propriety of Frist’s sale of HCA Inc. stock just before it dropped by nearly 10 percent.
Reid defended Frist’s actions.
“I know he wouldn’t do anything intentionally wrong,” Reid said of his counterpart
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Democratic_leader_sets_up_b_0926.html
Frist has been pathetic from day one. I never thought anyone would make me miss Trent Lott. Santorum is also a disappointment. The only man honorable enough to lead the Senate is Tom Coburn.
Hopefully this is a tempest in a teapot initiated by the rats that Frist thought would make nice with him when he came out for fetal stem cell research...I lost all my respect for him then. In fact I pity him.
He sent me a form letter explaining very feebly why he supported this gruesome inhuman research.
Damn you must be working for mccain or the demmocommies.
"A California-based watchdog group, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, had complained to the Senate Ethics Committee last year that Frist's holdings posed a conflict because of his support for legislation limiting medical-malpractice lawsuits, which could benefit HCA and its subsidiaries if it passed."
The Ethics Committee dismissed that complaint because the Tennessee Republican never worked for HCA, but his office said he chose to sell the stock anyway.
His defense is: "No insider information was available . . . "
Do Freepers know the legal definition of "insider trading?" I do because before retiring I worked for Morgan Stanley in NY and also was a lawyer. Many questions need to be answered: Were there any conversations between Senator Frist and his brother during the year 2005? What did they discuss? Did the brother inform the Senator that he might want to sell his stock? How much money did earn from the sale? Was it $ 10 million, $ 1 million or $ 50,000? How much of an economic loss would he have suffered if the stock was not sold? Do Senate ethics rules require that he suffer an economic loss?
Another issue: The Senator did not perceive any conflicts during the period 1994 - 2004. But during that period, bills were presented for vote that impacted health care providers. All during that period, the value of his stock was increasing. Suddenly, the economic picture changed. Why would owning that stock present a conflict today there were no perceived conflicts before?
There are far too many questions that need to be answered. But right now the "appearance of impropriety" is present in the timing of the stock sale. He sold out just before the stock tanked badly. It's almost as strong as res ipsa loquitur or the "facts speak for themselves". Frist may have violated Senate ethics regulations without the intention of profiting, i.e. negligently violating the rule.
I'm not saying he will face criminal prosecution. But he might face formal censure. Democrats will be howling like wild monkeys.