MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said she was worried the Justice Department was targeting Sen. Richard Burr because of his handling of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation.
She echoed her MSNBC colleague Joe Scarborough, who speculated there was something amiss with the Justice Department insider trading investigation into the North Carolina Republican who on Thursday relinquished his role as the chairman of the intelligence panel.
“One of the absolutely unique ways in which our current federal government is so terrible right now is that as bad as the insider trading allegations are against Sen. Burr, we also simultaneously have to worry whether the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr might be targeting Sen. Burr for reasons that are less about insider trading and more about convenience to the Trump administration,” Maddow said.
“Sen. Burr, you will recall, has led the only functional bipartisan congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. His committee’s findings have supported the intelligence community’s conclusions that, for example, Russia interfered in the 2016 election to support Donald Trump’s candidacy,” Maddow added. “More to the point though, Sen. Burr’s committee is set to release its final report on the Russia issue in coming months, and that installment, that last installment we’re expecting, is on ‘possible coordination’ between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
As the host mentioned, Burr’s committee has released multiple updates on its investigation into Russian interference, while the most recent findings defended 2017’s intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.
After a commercial break, Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan and a legal analyst for the network, argued that this type of speculation was “the cost of an attorney general who does things that undermine public trust in the Department of Justice.”
On Wednesday night, Burr was served a warrant from the FBI for his cellphone in connection to an insider trading investigation related to a series of stock sales he made as he was receiving coronavirus briefings in February.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday morning that Burr said he would be stepping down as chairman of the intelligence panel while the federal investigation plays out. Burr has denied any wrongdoing in his stock sales. He claimed that all of his financial decisions were made with information available to the general public.
