Sen. Richard Burr stepping aside as Intelligence Committee chair amid FBI investigation of his stock sales
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). (Win McNamee/Bloomberg)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement that
Burr informed him Thursday morning “of his decision to step aside as
Chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of the
investigation. We agreed that this decision would be in the best
interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day
tomorrow.”
The decision to step aside acknowledges the awkward, ethically fraught
dynamic that would have existed if Burr (R-N.C.) had continued to lead a
committee with oversight responsibilities for an agency conducting a
criminal investigation of his conduct.
It also has implications for the delicate balance of power between the
government’s executive and legislative branches, suggesting that an
investigation alone may be enough to remove a senior lawmaker from a key
post. In the case of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), he did not step
down from a ranking committee position until he after he was indicted on corruption charges in 2015 — a case that eventually fell apart.
A senior Justice Department official said the warrant for Burr’s
cellphone was approved “at the highest levels” of the agency and was
served on Burr’s lawyer — though the phone had to be retrieved from
Burr’s home.
Investigators obtained a search warrant to examine data in the senator’s
cloud storage for his iPhone, according to a person familiar with the
case. The Burr search warrants were first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.
Tom Mentzer, a spokesman for Feinstein, said Thursday that she was
“asked some basic questions by law enforcement about her husband’s stock
transactions.” The spokesman said Feinstein “was happy to voluntarily
answer those questions to set the record straight and provided
additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husband’s
transactions. There have been no follow up actions on this issue.” She
was questioned in April, aides said.
Disclosure records show Feinstein and her husband sold between $1.5
million to $6 million worth of stock between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18.
Speaking briefly to reporters Thursday, Burr said he has been
cooperating with investigators “from the beginning,” and urged everyone
“to let this investigation play out.”
He said he stepped aside as chairman because the insider trading
investigation “is a distraction to the hard work of the committee, and
the members and I think that the security of the country is too
important to have a distraction.”
Because the intelligence committee is a select committee, its Republican
membership and leadership is largely up to McConnell. Aides to the
majority leader declined to comment Thursday afternoon when asked whom
he might install as chairman. Burr is expected to remain on the
committee even though he will not be chairman.
If McConnell chooses to go by seniority, Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho),
would be next in line to chair the committee, but he already leads the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After Risch is Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.), a national security hawk who had been widely expected to take
over the committee once Burr retires. But Rubio currently leads the
Senate Small Business Committee, a once-sleepy panel that is suddenly
relevant now with a small-business lending program the centerpiece of a
$2 trillion coronavirus rescue package passed by Congress last month.
Both Risch and Rubio declined to comment at the Capitol, as did their offices.
Another Republican, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), defended Burr and
said he believed the lawmaker’s explanation that his trades were based
on media reports he saw at that time on the business news channel CNBC.
“I don’t believe he did anything criminally wrong, maybe used poor
judgment, I guess, but I know Richard and he’s the one guy I can tell
you who actually does watch CNBC Hong Kong,” said Graham. “The bottom
line is, let’s just see how this turns out. I’ve got nothing but good
things to say about Richard Burr.”
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, “in keeping with our standard
practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of our
investigations.”
The Justice Department has been investigating stock trades Burr made since March. The inquiry followed a review of public disclosures, first reported by the Center for Responsive
Politics and ProPublica,
that showed Burr and his wife sold 33 stocks worth between $628,033 and
$1.72 million — including many in sectors hard-hit by the pandemic,
such as the hotel, restaurant and shipping industries. Burr reportedly received
daily coronavirus briefings in the weeks leading up to the February
sell-off. His brother-in-law also sold off significant shares in
February, ProPublica reported last week.
In early February, Burr co-wrote a Fox News op-ed in
which he reassured Americans “the United States today is better
prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like
the coronavirus.” On Feb. 13, he sold his stocks.
From late February through mid-March, the stock market posted steep declines as
the coronavirus reached the United States and states began implementing
stay-at-home orders that hampered or shut down large segments of the
American economy.
Burr has denied wrongdoing and asked for the Senate Ethics Committee to review his financial dealings.
Members of Congress were barred in 2012 from using information not available to the wider public. Burr was one of just three senators who voted against the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act, which extended insider-trading regulations to U.S. senators and representatives. At the time, he called the legislation “ludicrous.”
No one has been charged under the Stock Act, and legal experts say it
would be difficult to do so given court rulings in a prior investigation
involving health-care stocks. But the execution of a search warrant
against a member of Congress is a significant step, one requiring the
approval of senior law enforcement officials.
“This is not something the FBI or DOJ does lightly,” Preet Bharara, a
former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted Wednesday
night. “It requires layers of review, the blessing of a judge, and
consideration of severe reputational harm to a sitting US Senator.”
A search warrant indicates investigators were able to show to the
satisfaction of a federal judge or magistrate probable cause to suspect a
crime occurred and an expectation of the search yielding evidence.
“Investigation of Sen. Richard Burr just got serious,” tweeted Barb McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former U.S. attorney for Michigan.
A search warrant is usually used in the later stages of an investigation because it requires sufficient evidence to show a judge probable cause and because it requires notice to the subject, meaning covert investigative steps are no longer possible. axios.com/fbi-warrant-ri…
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Burr was not the only senator accused of abusing coronavirus-related
information that wasn’t available to the general public to make personal
financial decisions. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) also came under fire
after the Daily Beast reported she had sold a significant share of stocks in January after attending the same briefings as Burr. Loeffler has denied playing an active role in the sales and called the outcry over the transactions a “political attack.”
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) also drew public scrutiny for selling stocks around the same time.
Some legal observers noted there would be a potential disparity if Burr
was investigated but not other members of Congress who engaged in
similar trades, particularly Loeffler. After the Justice Department’s
investigation of Burr became public, a Loeffler spokesman said federal
law enforcement officials had not contacted her.
Burr and President Trump have had a tense relationship at times.
Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee that Burr chairs issued a subpoena against
Donald Trump Jr. as part of an investigation of potential ties between
the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. The subpoena was inconvenient for the Republicans defending
the president, who were trying to dismiss the investigation as a
politically motivated hit job. Burr also developed a cooperative and
collegial relationship with a lawmaker across the aisle, Sen. Mark R.
Warner (Va.), the committee’s ranking Democrat. Their rapport was
frowned upon by Trump loyalists.
Matt Zapotosky and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
