Why Richard Burr thought he’d get away with his coronavirus insider trading
Today we learned that even as Republican Senator Richard Burr was publicly asserting last month that the U.S. government had a handle on the coronavirus crisis, he was privately admitting that it was going to be a disaster – and he personally sold off his stocks that were worth as much as $1.5 million, just before the stock market collapsed.
Richard Burr’s people are insisting tonight that this was all somehow on the up and up. But various legal experts have asserted that Burr’s actions meet the definition of insider trading. As the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was receiving information that the public didn’t yet have, and he was making stock trades based on it. Martha Stewart went down for this. The fictional Gordon Gecko even went down for it in the movie Wall Street. So what made Burr think he could get away with it?
Interestingly enough, Burr is acutely aware of the laws governing this sort of thing. Members of Congress used to be exempt from insider trading laws. But the STOCK Act of 2012 specifically outlawed congressional insider trading. One of the very few Senators to vote against the legislation: Richard Burr.
There goes any shot at deniability. So what was he thinking? Like most criminals, he was surely hoping that no one would figure out what he’d done. If you steal a car, the owner will notice, and there will be a criminal investigation. But with insider trading, unless someone happens to notice what you’ve done, you get away with it.
In case Richard Burr did get caught, he’d obviously be finished politically. But he’s already set to retire at the end of his current Senate term in 2022, so perhaps he figured that since he was never going to run for office again anyway, he might as well cash in. Perhaps he further figured that the money he gained was worth any criminal charges he might have to fend off.
But if Joe Biden wins the election, he’ll install a legitimate Attorney General, and it’s hard to imagine Richard Burr won’t face criminal charges at that point. Burr could offer to resign his Senate seat now in exchange for immunity from the current corrupt Department of Justice, but such a deal wouldn’t necessarily hold up once Bill Barr is gone. Either way, the pressure on Richard Burr to resign will be overwhelming in the coming days.
