FBI agents reportedly seized the cell phone of a North Carolina senator Wednesday as part of a Justice Department investigation into the lawmaker’s eyebrow-raising stock trades at the start of the coronavirus crisis.
Sen. Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, handed over his phone to the agents after they served him with a search warrant at his Washington-area home, an anonymous official told Yahoo News.
The Justice Department began probing Burr’s stock transactions at the end of March to gauge whether he violated a law preventing members of Congress from trading on insider information they received through their jobs.
Burr had sold off $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks a week before the intensifying spread of COVID-19 led the market to crash. He was among a handful of lawmakers who received confidential briefings on the virus from US health officials.
Burr dumped his stocks while publicly downplaying the risks of the virus in media appearances and op-eds.
The senator has claimed that his transactions were based solely on media reports and has invited the Senate Ethics Committee to review the sales.
Burr’s office declined to comment on the report Wednesday night.
