About Those Members Of Congress Trading On Insider Information...

Eggs seem mighty expensive lately, don't they? Profiteering under cover of a national emergency is a crime, isn't it? I believe prices are only allowed to go up 10% in a situation like the one we find ourselves in today. I don't think anyone is enforcing that. As for Congress... well, it's filled with scoundrels and thieves. And the White House... what can I say that hasn't already be said a million times over? We truly have let our democracy turn into a kakistocracy. WE did that.. And, no, I'm not just talking about ex-congressional crooks Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Chris Collins (R-NY), both of whom have already been found guilty. I'm talking about the corona-crooks still in Congress-- and it goes beyond just Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), the most blatant of the criminals. The Charlotte Observer called on Burr to resign last week. There are a lot of other editorial boards around the country that should get busy as well.

In the Burr case, the editorial board wrote that "More than a week has passed since news reports revealed how U.S. Sen Richard Burr profited off the coronavirus while failing to warn his constituents at the early, critical stages of the crisis. Things are hardly getting rosier for North Carolina’s senior senator. Burr has been abandoned by fellow Republicans, some of whom have called for his resignation. He’s been sued by a shareholder of Wyndham Hotels & Suites for selling off $150,000 of that company’s stock. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a statement that, while not using Burr’s name, warned members of Congress about doing what the senator is accused of doing-- trading off privileged information and briefings. And, on Monday, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department is investigating those stock trades. He is toxic to his party. He is embarrassing to North Carolina. Clearly, his problems are not going to go away. So why isn’t he?"

On Sunday, CNN reported that the Trumpist Justice Department "has started to probe a series of stock transactions made by lawmakers ahead of the sharp market downturn stemming from the spread of coronavirus, according to two people familiar with the matter. The inquiry, which is still in its early stages and being done in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission, has so far included outreach from the FBI to at least one lawmaker, Sen. Richard Burr, seeking information about the trades, according to one of the sources... Under insider trading laws, prosecutors would need to prove the lawmakers traded based on material non-public information they received in violation of a duty to keep it confidential."

Burr in the chair of the Senate Intel Committee, which was briefed on COVID-19 several times before it was seen as a pandemic and Burr ran out and sold about $1.6 million in hotel and airline stock-- and also warned wealthy North Carolina donors, though not the general public. Another one who smells at least as bad as Burr is billionaire Kelly Loeffler, a notorious slime bucket who bought her seat from Georgia's crooked governor last December. She and her scumbag husband, president of the New York Stock Exchange, sold a couple dozen stocks worth around $3 million dollars just before they crashed. Other senators being looked into are Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK).

Why do members of Congress keep committing crimes? That's an easy one. They invariably escape serious retribution which makes them willing to take risks. A couple of life sentences and it's unlikely that crooks like Burr and Inhofe would be going for a quick buck like that.

In an unrelated case, Open Secrets' Karl Evers-Hillstrom reported last week that the the Campaign Legal Center is asking ethics officials to investigate campaign spending by Steven Palazzo (R-MS) after the watchdog group found that he channeled six figures of donors’ money to family-owned businesses, not unlike what Duncan Hunter was nailed for. "Palazzo," wrote Evers-Hillstrom, "used campaign funds to pay over $60,000 in rent to his own farm between 2018 and 2019, according to Federal Election Commission filings. His campaign also spent nearly $128,000 with his now ex-wife’s accounting firm since 2011. Federal election law prohibits candidates from using campaign funds for personal use. But candidates can justify funneling donors’ money to themselves or family members if they make the case that the spending is campaign-related."

The Campaign Legal Center argues that Palazzo had an existing accounting firm and his campaign didn’t need the services of Palazzo & Co., which is run by his ex-wife. The two reportedly divorced in 2016, but much of that spending came when they were still married. The group also says Palazzo’s farm wasn’t critical to his campaign, as he reportedly sold it prior to his 2020 primary election, and that the payments would be “unusually high” for a campaign office.

“The lack of any publicly available information about the campaign using the farm as an office, the sale of the property prior to the primary campaign, and its remote location all suggest that the farm was completely for personal use and that it did not have any campaign purpose justifying $60,000 in rent,” lawyers for the Campaign Legal Center wrote in a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics.