Richard Burr: Part 2 - There's more (there's always more)

As the coronavirus outbreak began to spread across the U.S. in mid-February, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) unloaded his holdings in dozens of stocks that would lose much of their market value over the coming weeks.

Burr and his wife Brooke sold between $581,000 and $1.5 million in publicly traded stocks on Feb. 13 and didn’t buy any new positions, according to a recent financial disclosure filed with the Senate.

  Center for Responsive Politics

In his most recent annual financial disclosure filed in 2019, Burr reported holding $1.3 million in equities. Anywhere between one-fourth and three-fourths of that was liquidated on a single day last month.

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Around the time that Burr sold his shares of major corporations, including several hard hit hotel companies, he publicly expressed confidence about the U.S. government’s ability to fight the virus. However in late February, Burr privately warned that the virus is “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” according to a recording obtained by NPR.

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In a Feb. 7 opinion piece for Fox News, Burr and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) wrote that the U.S. is “is better prepared than ever before” to deal with a health crisis like the coronavirus.

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Between the Burrs’ two accounts, they sold up to $150,000 worth of stock in Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which lost almost two-thirds of its market value since Feb. 13. They sold up to $150,000 in Extended Stay America, another hotel company that lost half its value over the last month. Burr also sold between $15,001 and $50,000 of stock in Park Hotels & Resorts, which saw its stock price drop from nearly $24 to under $5. The hotel industry is asking President Donald Trump for a bailout as Americans increasingly avoid travel.

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It’s unclear how much control Burr has over his portfolio. His assets are managed by private wealth management firm Stephens Inc. Burr’s net worth in 2018 was between $3.4 million and $11 million, according to OpenSecrets’ review of his disclosure.

And that's how he'll get off. Let's check into that firm's officers' accounts to see if they mysteriously dumped a bunch of stock on or about that same day.

Influential lawmakers have been known to unload their stocks before markets tank. Amid the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of members made drastic changes to their portfolios after meeting with key government officials.

And they should all be doing time.

There better be a Congressional investigation of Burr.