Posted on 06/22/2009 9:40:15 AM PDT by Graybeard58
In 2001, TV personality and business magnate Martha Stewart got a third-hand tip that one of her stocks was about to tank. She sold her shares to avoid $45,673 loss, pocket change for the fabulously wealthy entrepreneur. She later was accused of insider trading, but it turned out what she did was legal.
But federal prosecutors, apparently channeling predecessors who put gangster Al Capone behind bars on innocuous income-tax charges when they couldn't get him on murder, bootlegging, bribery and many other crimes, managed to put Ms. Stewart in prison in 2004 on charges she broke the law in her attempts to cover up the stock deal's faint whiff of insider trading. The underlying "crime," however, did not rise to the level of actual insider trading.
We present this brief history lesson for purposes of comparison with the actions of Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin.
"The Illinois senator's 2008 financial-disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks," Bloomberg News reported Monday. "Altogether, Durbin sold investments worth $116,000 in September."
Did Sen. Durbin use the information supplied by Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke to his personal benefit? Was this therefore insider trading?
His spokesman says no. Everybody was getting out of the stock market at the time, and besides, the information disclosed at the closed-door meeting was available to the public Sept. 19.
Hmm. The value of the stock Ms. Stewart sold fell 18 percent the day after she sold it. So the latter excuse by Sen. Durbin's spokesman is utterly without merit.
We trust federal prosecutors will pursue the Durbin case with at least as much energy as they applied to the Stewart case, and that the Senate Ethics Committee will get on it as soon as it resolves the year-old allegations of unethical financial dealings by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
If it hasn’t been reported by the Press Brothel, it never happened.
“Hmm. The value of the stock Ms. Stewart sold fell 18 percent the day after she sold it. So the latter excuse by Sen. Durbin’s spokesman is utterly without merit. “
AS much as I dislike Sen Durbin, I fail to see the smoking gun here. If he sold all his shares in one day and the price tanked the next day, I’d say something stinks...but if sold the shares piecemeal or even after the major decline...what would be wrong with that?
In short the article indicate a “hint” of wrong doing, but that’s about it.
What I remember was that she had all of her email correspondence destroyed so that there was no evidence. That's why she was successfully prosecuted for obstruction.
I never heard that what she did was legal.
How about strict term limits? Flushing the toilet every few years would be good.
Sadly, if the weak-stream media doesn’t go wall-to-wall with it, it didn’t happen.
“It isn’t corruption whan they do it...”
Run by Bernie Madoff...
“If it hasn’t been reported by the Press Brothel, it never happened.”
Speaking of Brothel’s, seems to me the former AG of New York that took down Martha Stewart was himself taken down by similar professionals.
Don’t hold your breath that anything will happen to this little creep remember he is a democrat..Nothing happened to dirty Nancy for calling the CIA liars and nothing will happen to this pig..
She was put in jail for lying about a crime she was never charged with.
Count on seeing a lot more of this - Ted Stevens (Former R, AK) and several other (R) party hacks were prosecuted - only to have the trials thrown out due to FedGov proceticorial misconduct.
Scalp hunters, the lot of ‘em!
Democrats are thieves, murderers, and scoundrels. Its what gets them elected. People with no morals need representation too.
But he is a democrat + this is a democrat White House + he has a democrat press corpse + ABCNNBCBS won’t talk about democrat failures and corruption = Nope.
Ain’t gonna happen. Should happen, of course, but it ain’t gonna happen.
If the toilet is flushed so seldom, the bowl becomes a filthy mess regardless of being flushed. ... These lying federal oligarchs have so soiled the ‘bowl’ that it makes little difference now what designation is placed upon the fecal floaters infesting ‘Washington, DC’.
But since she destroyed all the evidence, she didn't get the 20-year sentence most folks get. They could only get her for obstruction and lying.
THanks for the link, I stand corrected.
I confess that I had to look it up because I couldn’t remember. ;)
Nothing will happen to this creep. Very true. Plus Martha Stewart is not a dimocrat politician. But she does have a real birth certificate.
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