Justice Department drops investigations into 3 senators over stock sales
Washington — The Justice Department has ended its investigation into three senators who were under scrutiny for stock trades made before the coronavirus pandemic roiled the U.S. financial markets and began its rapid spread across the country, while an investigation into a fourth senator remains ongoing.
A U.S. official familiar with the investigations told CBS News that Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California are no longer being investigated. GOP Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, who stepped aside as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, remains under investigation. The developments were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Loeffler, said in a statement the "clear exoneration by the Justice Department" affirms that Loeffler did nothing wrong, as she has maintained.
"This was a politically-motivated attack shamelessly promoted by the fake news media and her political opponents," Lawson said. "Senator Loeffler will continue to focus her full attention on delivering results for Georgians."
Inhofe told The Oklahoman on Tuesday he had been cleared by the Justice Department and reiterated that he "did nothing wrong."
The Justice Department declined to comment.
Senate records showed that the senators sold significant amounts of stocks in January and February, just before the markets plummeted because of the pandemic and top Trump administration officials began to hold briefings on the threat of the virus.
The trades raised questions of whether the senators used nonpublic information to guide their transactions, though the three maintained they did not engage in wrongdoing and do not make investment decisions themselves.
Feinstein said in March that across her career in the Senate, she has held all assets in a blind trust and did not attend a January 24 all-Senate briefing on the coronavirus threat. Inhofe said then that allegations he sold equities following the late-January briefing were "completely baseless and 100% false" and told reporters he did not attend the meeting with top Trump administration officials.
Loeffler, too, said investment decisions are made by third-party advisers without her knowledge or involvement. She and her husband cashed out their individual stock holdings and moved their money into diversified mutual funds in the wake of the controversy over their financial transactions.
Burr and his wife, meanwhile, sold between $600,000 and $1.7 million in stocks in late January and mid-February, before the markets were roiled by the coronavirus pandemic. The North Carolina senator said in a statement in March that he relied only on public news reports to inform his decision to sell stocks February 13, but asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review the matter.
He also temporarily stepped down as chairman of the Intelligence Committee amid the federal probe into allegations of insider trading. The FBI seized Burr's cell phone as part of the investigation into his stock sales.
Andres Triay contributed to this report.