North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein has called for an investigation into Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., over his selling stock just before the market crashed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Burr, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been accused in a lawsuit of violating the STOCK Act by committing “elementary securities fraud” after he and his wife allegedly sold a significant percentage of their stocks in a hotel and resort company. Burr claims that he relied only on public news reports for his financial decisions, and not any confidential briefings he receives as a senator and the chair of the Senate intel panel.
“Last week’s reports about Sen. Burr’s decision to unload some of his stock holdings before the stock market crashed are extremely troubling,” Stein wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “The people of North Carolina deserve ethical and law-abiding public officials. The people also deserve to know whether Sen. Burr violated the STOCK Act or any other federal law by using non-public information to sell stocks and avoid losses.”
He added, “Therefore, in addition to any review by the Senate Ethics Committee, I believe that a thorough and complete investigation by appropriate federal authorities is warranted. As the state Attorney General, I am not in position to investigate this matter since any potential violation of law would be federal. Elected officials should use their offices to serve the public, not themselves.
Stein said, “That’s why I have sought changes in state law to allow for the Attorney General to convene investigative grand juries in public corruption cases involving state officials. I will continue to press the General Assembly for such authority.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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