The FBI has seized a cellphone belonging to Sen. Richard Burr as it investigates stock trades he made at start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The North Carolina Republican gave his cellphone up to the agents while they served a search on Burr at his residence, an official confirmed to the Los Angeles Times. Authorities are looking into whether Barr purposely dumped stocks on Feb. 13 as part of an insider trading investigation.
A spokesperson for Burr declined to comment when reached by the Washington Examiner late Wednesday night.
Burr took bipartisan condemnation after news of the sales was revealed. He is accused of using information he received from daily intelligence community briefings as the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman to inform his trading decisions. After he offloaded as much as $1.72 million of his holdings, Burr reportedly compared the growing health crisis to the 1918 flu pandemic at an exclusive Feb. 27 luncheon.
The Republican senator has maintained that he did nothing wrong and asked for the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a full investigation into the allegations. He said in a statement after the controversy began that he “relied solely on public news reports” in his decision to sell a large percentage of his portfolio in 33 separate transactions.
“Sen. Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak,” a spokesperson for Burr told the Washington Examiner at the time while downplaying the accusations.
Figures ranging from Fox News host Tucker Carlson to Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for Burr to resign if the accusations are true. Other lawmakers of both parties have also came under scrutiny for their trades at the start of the pandemic, which has infected almost 1.4 million people in the United States since it began and killed more than 84,000 as it wreaks havoc on the economy.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the FBI for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
