Richard Burr
Senate Intel Chairman Richard Burr dumped as much as $1.72 million in hotel stocks before the Coronavirus panic hit the US while reassuring the public about Coronavirus preparedness.
The Justice Department is working with the Securities and Exchange Commission to probe the trades make by Burr and other lawmakers after they were briefed on the Coronavirus pandemic.
According to CNN, the FBI has been in contact with Senator Burr seeking information about the trades.
Burr made a series of stock trades after receiving private briefings about the Coronavirus.
The North Carolina Senator however claimed he got all of his information from public news reports.
“I relied solely on public news reports to guide my decisions regarding the sale of stocks on February 13,” Burr said. “Specifically, I closely followed CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time.”
Privately Burr sounded the alarm and compared Coronavirus to the 1918 “Spanish Flu” that nearly wiped out 10% of the world’s population at the time — including 675,000 Americans by some estimates.
“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said, according to a secret recording obtained by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
Publicly, however, Burr downplayed the virus.
Tucker Carlson recently went off on Richard Burr for selling stock after learning about how devastating Coronavirus would be.
“There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis,” said Tucker.
Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler dumped millions worth of stocks following a private briefing on the Coronavirus.
Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) also dumped about a million dollars worth of stocks and her husband Richard Blum sold up to $5 million worth of stocks after his wife received info from private Coronavirus briefings.