There’s a stock sale scandal in the United States Senate. ProPublica and others have breathlessly broken the story that GOP Senators are capitalizing off of this COVID-19 mess.

“Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.

As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.”

Of course, the implication throughout this entire news story is that Burr is making zillions of dollars off of this virus. The New York Times and tons of other media outlets happily jumped on the bandwagon. OOHHH!! Guess What?? Rich people are awful! Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) is REALLY BAD according to The Daily Beast. 

“The Senate’s newest member sold off seven figures’ worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private, all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that subsequently hammered U.S. equities.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus.

“Appreciate today’s briefing from the President’s top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak,” she tweeted about the briefing at the time.”

Again, the implication is that these Senators got briefed and immediately ran to their brokers and ordered a sell off. Buried deep in these lovely media stories, or not mentioned at all (see ProPublica above) is the fact that Dianne Feinstein had a major stock sell-off at about the same time. Of course, the news about Feinstein is being glossed over as ‘nothing to see here, move along.’

Given the media is all in for the Democrats and has been for years, this doesn’t surprise me. Feinstein and family and other Democrats have a long history of flouting the rules. Remember when her husband was granted a high-value contract dealing with foreclosed properties? Feinstein was the key leader on introducing legislation that ended up putting lots of money in her husband’s pocket with that contract. Let’s also not forget Feinstein’s long history with a Chinese chauffeur.

But hey! Never mind that. The Republicans are the bad guys here!

Here’s the thing with this. Yes, it looks bad. If you are a person that doesn’t have an investment portfolio, you’d read these stories and believe the hype. However, if you are a person that DOES have an investment portfolio, the stories should be read with skepticism. Why?

Because if all those Senators, including Feinstein, got information and immediately told their brokers/investment advisors to sell key stock, the tax hit could be huge for them.

Furthermore, of those stocks that each of them sold, I’d delve deeper into looking at the stock performance in the weeks leading up to the sales and the quarterly projections by the companies in question.

What if these sales were already in motion as a function of re-balancing portfolios?

Look, I know for a fact that many advisors, including ones I know, were already concerned about the news coming from China in JANUARY. I attended a meeting involving a Foundation the first week of February. The discussion involving the Foundation’s portfolio talked about what was going on in China and that steps were being taken to look at re-balancing risk. Guess what? That re-balancing could include sales of some stocks/funds/bonds, and purchases of others!

The potential insider trading is dreadful and possibly criminal, but what could elevate this to a historic scandal is the idea that senators may have known enough to be alarmed for themselves yet still projected rosy scenarios to the public AND failed to make sure we were ready. https://t.co/PeMktkEPFA

— David French (@DavidAFrench) March 20, 2020

Yes, if there was behind the scenes information shared, then ALL Senators including Feinstein need to be held to account. However, if this was stuff already in progress, then the pitchforks need to be put down.

If this was all set to run a big GOTCHA on the Republicans, which is what it seems to smell like, then the media once again is peddling slime because Trump.

Feature Photo Credit: Gerald via Pixabay, cropped and modified