Senators Burr and Loeffler Accused of Insider Trading After COVID-19 Briefings

Reports emerged that multiple U.S. Senators sold significant amounts of stock after attending classified briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic, but before the public understood the severity of the crisis and before markets crashed. On January 24, 2020, the Senate Committees on Health and Foreign Relations held a closed meeting with only Senators present to brief them about COVID-19 and its potential impact on the United States. In the weeks following these briefings, several senators executed suspiciously well-timed stock trades.

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sold between $600,000 and $1.7 million in stocks on February 13, 2020—his largest single-day stock trade in 14 months. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported her first stock sale on January 24, the very day of the classified briefing, jointly selling stocks worth between $1.275 million and $3.1 million with her husband (who was chairman of the New York Stock Exchange) through February 14. Meanwhile, Burr publicly downplayed COVID-19’s threat while privately warning wealthy constituents at a private club luncheon that the virus would be “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history.”

The scandal prompted investigations by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, and even Fox News host Tucker Carlson called for Burr’s resignation. On May 13, 2020, the FBI seized Burr’s phone to investigate his communications with his stock broker, and he temporarily stepped down as Intelligence Committee chairman. Despite clear evidence of trading on classified information, the Justice Department closed all investigations on May 26, 2020, without bringing any charges—exemplifying the gap between STOCK Act rhetoric and enforcement reality, and the political elite’s continued impunity for actions that would result in criminal prosecution for ordinary Americans.