Lawmakers accused of stock dumping

WASHINGTON—Several senators unloaded millions of dollars in stock holdings just before the coronavirus pandemic sent the markets into a tailspin, reports revealed on Thursday.

Did they know what was coming? All of the lawmakers received official private briefings on the outbreak shortly before their stock sales. Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California all dumped shares ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in value. A few of them denied knowledge of the trades until after they happened. Burr on Friday said he did not use insider knowledge in his decision to sell, and he welcomed a Senate ethics investigation. A 2012 law requires lawmakers to publicly disclose their stock market transactions to prevent lawmakers from profiting from insider information.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Stew about what the Senate is doing to address the outbreak.