What do you know about this?
Four U.S. senators, three Republicans and a Democrat, allegedly have been caught doing something that gets many of the rest of us tossed in the slammer.
GOP Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, along with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, allegedly dumped a whole lot of stock immediately before its value tanked. A coincidence?
Many of us are quite skeptical of the timing of it all.
It’s called “insider trading,” which is what some individuals are able to do when they get information about investment value that isn’t known widely to the rest of the public.
Burr has asked for a Senate Ethics Committee probe into the matter. He also denies doing anything wrong. Sure thing, senator. That’s what they all say.
Feinstein is the Senate’s senior Democrat; Burr chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee; Inhofe has been in the Senate for many years; Loeffler is a GOP newbie, having just taken office in recent weeks after being appointed to succeed Sen. Johnny Isaakson, who retired.
This doesn’t look good for any of them.
Calls are beginning to mount for a full-blown investigation into what they knew and when they knew it. Others are calling for all of them to resign.
This is infuriating, if true. Part of me wants to grant them all the due process they deserve; they are, after all, citizens just like the rest of us and they deserve the presumption of innocence. Another part of me, though, tends to believe the allegations. They need not quit the Senate just because someone has leveled a serious charge against them.
However, all Americans — millions of whom are suffering terrible financial pain as a result of this pandemic — need and deserve answers into what these so-called “guardians” of the public trust knew before they dumped their stock and made all that dough.