Resign Now, Go to Prison Later

I was off all social media and news yesterday until late, and when I finally checked in around 9:00 p.m. the story that overwhelmed all else in this cacophony we live in was that multiple U.S. Senate Republicans had used insider information from a Congressional briefing on the coronavirus back in January to sell and buy stocks to benefit themselves. One of the senators also gave a private briefing to rich donors.

Not only did these Senators know the coronavirus would be bad, but they took that knowledge to make money for themselves (and sometimes their donors).

Richard Burr (North Carolina 202-224-3154, in case you want to call and tell him to resign) is chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (!). He sold $500,000–$1.5 million in stock — including multiple hotel chains — in February, about a week before the market started to tank. This was as much as three-quarters of his equity holdings. He then gave a private warning about the virus and its impact to a N.C. big whig club on February 27. At that point there were 15 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., and he was publicly saying he was confident the government could fight the virus. He told the donors

It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history… It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.

He specifically warned them that schools would have to close, that European business trips should be cancelled, and that the military might be mobilized.

But the public got a different story from Burr. On February 7, for instance, he cowrote an opinion piece for Fox News that said the U.S. is “better prepared than ever before” to deal with something like the coronavirus. “Better than any other country” too, of course! Reading the NPR story linked here, his crimes are almost the worst because he clearly understood what the problem was and did nothing except bail out his own financial position and give a warning to rich constituents. (Burr accuses NPR of producing a “tabloid-style hit piece”… you be the judge.)

In 2012, Burr was one of three senators who voted against a bill that banned Congressional insider trading. Sources: opensecrets.org and NPR.

Kelly Loeffler (Georgia 202-224-3643) sold somewhere between $1 and $3 million worth of stock starting on January 24, the same day she and Burr had an all-Senate briefing on the virus. And she bought stock in Citrix, which owns Go to Meeting, a virtual meeting platform. Gee, I wonder why she thought that stock would be going up?

Not only all of that, she went on the offensive for Mulligan's coronavirus efforts on Twitter, writing this on February 28, 2020:

Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on #Coronavirus readiness.

Here's the truth: Donald Trump & his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe.

She continued to downplay the risks with similar language on February 28, and then on March 10 (!) wrote:

Concerned about #coronavirus? Remember this: The consumer is strong, the economy is strong, & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe.

Oh, and get this. Loeffler was appointed to the Senate just 18 days before she did this insider trading. She didn't make any stock trades after her appointment until the day of the briefing. She was appointed to her seat by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, the same former state attorney general who stole the election from Stacey Abrams through voter suppression. Loeffler's husband is president of the New York Stock Exchange. With a net worth of half a billion dollars, it appears Loeffler is the richest member of the Senate. She's on a subcommittee that oversees futures markets. I'm sure she can be trusted with that job, which gives her a direct role in overseeing her own and her husband's financial interests. Yes, that's who we need to have in the U.S. Senate. Salt of the earth. You can't make this stuff up, as they say.

Sources: rawstory.com and thedailybeast.com

On top of those two most egregious examples, Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) also dumped $5–25 million worth of ownership in his family's manufacturing company on March 2, according to the official Senate financial disclosure site. He then voted against the Senate coronavirus relief bill, like all the other Republicans from Wisconsin in both houses.

As with Mafia Mulligan, whose actions — crimes — are 10 or 100 times worse than Nixon's, these actions are orders of magnitude worse than what Martha Stewart did in insider trading (and she was sentenced to 5 months in prison and 2 years of supervised release, plus fines), and that doesn't even get into the the way some of these "public servants" openly lied to the public about the coming disaster, causing delay in trying to prevent it.

These people are all, I imagine, self-proclaimed Christians, who think they are going to get into heaven, despite that eye of the needle crap in the Bible. I don't imagine heaven is where they're going, but come the revolution, there are some handy walls to be up against.

Oh, and one more thing. Is anyone other than me interested in seeing what the Trumps and Kushners were doing with their stock holdings in January and February?

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A side note for history's sake: The Senate coronavirus briefing on January 24 happened DURING the Mafia Mulligan's impeachment hearings! Loeffler and Burr were sitting side by side during those hearings. You can never be too busy to save a few million dollars in your stock portfolio. Source



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Update: Two more senators, James Inhofe (Republican of Oklahoma, he of "snowballs prove climate change isn't real fame) and Diane Feinstein (Democrat of California), also sold substantial stock after the briefing. I have not looked into the details on either one. Both can also resign as far as I am concerned. I don't know that either one went the extra mile to vamp for Mulligan about the impending disaster, though. Inhofe may have, given his track record; it's doubtful Feinstein did.