Draining The Trumpist Swamp-- Chris Collins

Chris Collins (R-NY) making headlines

Early this morning, western New York Congressman Chris Collins, who represents the Buffalo and Rochester suburbs in a safe (R+11) seat that Trump won 59.7-35.2%, was arrested by the FBI, along with his son Cameron and Cameron's father-in-law, Stephen Zarsky. This is the indictment.

Collins is a backbencher who doesn't make many waves... just does whatever leadership tells him to do-- except for two things:

1- he was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump
2- he's an insider trading crook who used his office to enrich himself and several of his cronies

The co-chair of the Battery Storage Caucus, he has one of the highest Trump affinity scores in Congress-- 98.9%. He made news after the 2016 election when Chris Cuomo asked him about Trump considering Mitt Romney to head the State Department, telling CNN viewers that "What do I know about Mitt Romney? I know that he's a self-serving egomaniac who puts himself first, who has a chip on his shoulder, and thinks that he should be president of the United States."

Other than that, his only real brush with fame was when he bought 4 million shares of an Australian company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, which made him the single largest shareholder. He also told Tom Price (R-GA) and others to buy shares (Price bought 400,000 shares, valued at around a quarter million dollars, and was eventually fired as Secretary if Health and Human Services for his role in the insider trading scam). Collins had used his office-- and non-public information about drug trials-- to benefit the company and drive up the stock price. In the end, Collins' insider info allowed him and his family to avoid $768,000 in stock losses, based on what he knew about how a new multiple sclerosis drug had failed a medical trial, which quickly caused the Innate stock price to drop 92% when they announced that publicly.

Even if Collins winds up on trial before November, this is unlikely to have much impact on his race against progressive Democrat Nate McMurray, a Grand Island town supervisor who has raised only $133,624 against Collins' $1,274,249. The district is just too red... or is it? Wasserman at the Cook Report, who's usually very slow and tepid about changing race ratings, immediately changed NY-27 from "solid Republican" to "likely Republican." And Paul Ryan, while not calling on him to resign, did kick him off the House Energy Committee. "While his guilt or innocence is a question for the courts to settle," said Ryan, "the allegations against Rep. Collins demand a prompt and thorough investigation by the House Ethics Committee." Let's see if McMurray can make this enough of an issue to win with.