The "insider trading" case that the Department of Justice has initiated against Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina is getting stinkier by the minute, and looking like it's less and less about shady stock dealing than Donald Trump and Russia as more information unfolds. Burr has been forced out of his chairmanship of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by Senate Majority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell.
The warrant served on Burr to obtain his cell phone had to have been approved "at the HIGHEST levels of the Department of Justice, and it was" a senior DOJ official told Fox News. That would be Attorney General William Barr, who is doing his level best right now to throw dirt on Robert Mueller's Russia report, a report that Burr's Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has backed up in reports of its own, the final of which is even now being finalized for release in August. In fact, in the confirmation hearing for Rep. John Ratcliffe to be Director of National Intelligence (a whole other awful story) at the beginning of May, Burr focused on the upcoming declassification and release of that report.
Burr asked, given that the most recent report from SSCI confirmed the findings of the intelligence community that Russia had interfered, would Ratcliffe "commit to bringing information about threats to the election infrastructure and about foreign governments' efforts to influence to Congress so we're fully and currently informed?" Ratcliffe said he would. Then Burr asked, "over the last three years we have issued four reports. Number five is finished. Number five will go for declassification. Do we have your commitment as DNI that you would expeditiously go through the declassification process?" Ratcliffe said yes, but Trump and by extension Barr do not want that report declassified. One way to accomplish its being buried is to get more of a toady than Burr in the chairman's seat.
Add to that stench, Burr's colleague, Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler (who also sold millions worth of stock seemingly based on insider information about the coming pandemic) has not been contacted by federal authorities, according to her office. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and ranking member of SSCI, has answered questions about her husband's stock trades, and handed over documents. And so far Loeffler has been left alone?
How much more blatant can Barr be? This absolutely reeks of two things: political retribution and cover-up. Yes, there was plenty of evidence to make Burr a subject of investigation for insider trading. But this investigation is so ham-handed, such a sledgehammer and so aggressive that it screams bad faith. Because, really, the Trump administration gives a damn about insider trading?