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Sitting Trumper GOP Congressman Chris Collins (NY) Arrested by FBI on Insider Trading


Hugo Stiglitz

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Worth pointing out, also, that the SEC can "prosecute" insider trading civilly, requiring disgorgement of profits and banning people from various market-related activities, including serving on the board of a publicly-traded company.

For the US Attorney to bring actual criminal charges, it has to be a fairly egregious case.

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21 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

If this question has already been asked/answered, please forgive me. But in what world does it make sense for a US Congressperson to also sit on the board of directors of a publicly traded company? 

This is the part I cannot understand. How is this even remotely legal?

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Press conference was a joke as this lying sack of shit went on and on about how his company's drug Innate was going to cure MS2. But guess what? It didn't work, so he sold it short with inside info.

Actually, the best part was how he "scraped" together funds to buy some company in Buffalo and then promptly moved it Niagara creating 100's of jobs. Uh, what about the jobless you created in Buffalo?

effin' loser

Edited by Nolacycling
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2 hours ago, AngryDragon said:

Lol gotta hand it to the GOP. Absolutely no shame. 

It's all good and fun to bash the GOP, it's well deserved.  But to pretend for a millisecond that this isn't an issue affecting both parties is absurd.

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25 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's all good and fun to bash the GOP, it's well deserved.  But to pretend for a millisecond that this isn't an issue affecting both parties is absurd.

Really like to see this backed up with some numbers before I buy into to both side schtick. 

Because looking at the executive branch over the last 50 years, one party stands out more than the other.

executive-branch-criminal-activities-by-

 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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18 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I'm talking about about insider trading and other stock-market related self dealing in Congress.  It's rampant.

Or Issa using earmarks to widen the streets in front of buildings that he owns. 

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Collins's opponent Nate McMurray ran unopposed in the primary. I have it on good authority that once he was on the ballot, he was summoned to Albany to talk to the DNC bigwigs. Publicly they told him they all loved him and gushed about how he had a bright future in the party, but then Joe Crowley pulled him aside and told him: “Kid, you don’t have a prayer. We aren't giving you a dime. We don’t support your candidacy.”

McMurray told him he’s running anyway, and that he would find a way to win. Crowley told him that he was going to get destroyed. Then he said, “And you’re going to learn that you can’t do anything in this state without my say so.”

Lol how the mighty have fallen. 

The night the returns came in, McMurray texted the soon to be former Congressman: “Suck it, Crowley."

By 8 the next morning he had received a series of impassioned phone calls from democratic bigwigs excoriating him for “rubbing salt in Joe’s wounds.”

And now Crowley dead (politically) and Collins is in deep shit, lol. Don't fuck with half-Polish Mormon Democratic Socialists from Buffalo. 

 

Edited by MaybeACoordinator
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2 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Collins's opponent Nate McMurray ran unopposed in the primary. I have it on good authority that once he was on the ballot, he was summoned to Albany to talk to the DNC bigwigs. Publicly they told him they all loved him and gushed about how he had a bright future in the party, but then Joe Crowley pulled him aside and told him: “Kid, you don’t have a prayer. We aren't giving you a dime. We don’t support your candidacy.”

McMurray told him he’s running anyway, and that he would find a way to win. Crowley told him that he was going to get destroyed. Then he said, “And you’re going to learn that you can’t do anything in this state without my say so.”

Lol how the mighty have fallen. 

The night the returns came in, McMurray texted the soon to be former Congressman: “Suck it, Crowley."

By 8 the next morning he had received a series of impassioned phone calls from democratic bigwigs excoriating him for “rubbing salt in Joe’s wounds.”

And now Crowley dead (politically) and Collins is in deep shit, lol. Don't fuck with half-Polish Mormon Democratic Socialists from Buffalo. 

 

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5 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

It's all good and fun to bash the GOP, it's well deserved.  But to pretend for a millisecond that this isn't an issue affecting both parties is absurd.

Agreed, one party not a monopoly in wrongs is had by either camp...

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4 hours ago, Js1 said:

This is really starting to feel like 06 all over again. 

Just like '06, no one is getting ousted to close to the commander in chief... But some heads will roll to "drain the swamp" during midterm...

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Maddow had on a writer with the Buffalo paper who was on this story for over a year and he said that the company put out a positive press release on the US drug trials a couple days earlier in order to boost the stock price before the insiders unloaded the stock. He characterized it as a "pump and dump" scheme.

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11 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Really like to see this backed up with some numbers before I buy into to both side schtick. ...

 

BrazilHorn already provided it in post #23 of this thread.

20 hours ago, BrazilHorn said:

was a bit longer back than I remembered (2011) but they also compared it to their work in 2004 and saw similar gains.

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/congress/stock-market-returns-us-representatives

Crosses party lines, they're all crooks.

 

Quote

...
A 2011 study published in the journal Business and Politics, “Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives,” looks at the performance of stocks purchased by Congressmen to see if they perform better than the market as a whole. The researchers, based at Georgia State University, Lindenwood University, Florida Atlantic University and Augusta State University, were following up on an earlier study that looked at the stock market returns enjoyed by U.S. senators.

... The new study looked at the stock transactions of approximately 300 Congressmen from 1985 to 2001, more than 16,000 in all.

The researchers found that:

  •     Over the period studied, House members’ stocks earned “significant positive abnormal returns.” A portfolio based on Representatives’ purchases beat the market by 55 basis points per month, the equivalent of approximately 6% annually.
  •     Stocks purchased by Democratic Representatives significantly outperform stocks purchased by Republican Representatives.
  •     Seniority played a role in stock performance, but not in the sense that one might expect: Stocks of the least-senior Representatives performed significantly better than those with the most seniority.

The researchers write, “We find strong evidence that Members of the House have some type of nonpublic information which they use for personal gain.” Consequently, “abnormal returns associated with the common stocks of specific industries or companies should be investigated for patterns of potential misconduct.” In addition, they recommend that similar studies be performed on members of the Executive and Judicial branches of federal government.
...

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so, i want to return to a question i asked upthread:

how in the blue fuck is it legal for a sitting member of congress to sit on a public company's board? 

(i mean, i know why it's legal, because the foxes are in charge of the henhouse, but jesus christ)

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13 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

so, i want to return to a question i asked upthread:

how in the blue fuck is it legal for a sitting member of congress to sit on a public company's board? 

(i mean, i know why it's legal, because the foxes are in charge of the henhouse, but jesus christ)

Well, the problem comes when they are party to legislation particularly relevant to that company.

We WANT citizen congressmen.  I am fine with Congressman X being an owner of a family business, for example.  I am fine with him being an officer or executive of a private business...even a publicly-traded one.  If I am the owner of Brisketexan's Drilling Services, I should be able to keep my business and hold a Congressional seat.  I should just be barred from participating in or trading on the legislative process related to that business - if a bill has any nexus to petroleum production/sales, I need to steer clear.

And I am NO dove on Congressional crookery -- I just think that if we are going to have citizen legislators, we have to understand that many of them will actually be involved in businesses and professions outside of being in Congress.

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The President, his cabinet, and all of Congress should be required to put all of their investments into blind trusts for the entire duration of their time in public service. I'd be ok with carving out a small exception for ownership interests in family-owned companies, like Brisket mentioned above, but it'd need to be tailored so that it didn't actually allow a large business like Hobby Lobby to be considered a family business just because its tightly controlled.

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2 hours ago, David Dennison said:

I'd love for this to be the scandal that flips TX-7. The west side of Houston is getting more Democratic by the day and once it goes blue it might not go back.

Good thing we can just redraw the boundaries.

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12 hours ago, RayDog said:

Maddow had on a writer with the Buffalo paper who was on this story for over a year and he said that the company put out a positive press release on the US drug trials a couple days earlier in order to boost the stock price before the insiders unloaded the stock. He characterized it as a "pump and dump" scheme.

I pumped and dumped in your mom last night.

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What would be a really good idea would be to just enforce the existing SEC regulations, which (presumably) this relatively new STOCK act does.  

You know -- if you trade while in the possession of material non-public information, either for gain or for loss, you're fucked.  Like the rest of us.

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1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Now he’s not running anymore 

@FondrenRoad what's going to happen for this?  He's suspending his campaign and the primaries already happened in NY for federal offices.  I know you have some insight in this from your Joe Crowley/AOC discussions about him being on the WFP line and whatnot.

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55 minutes ago, Js1 said:

@FondrenRoad what's going to happen for this?  He's suspending his campaign and the primaries already happened in NY for federal offices.  I know you have some insight in this from your Joe Crowley/AOC discussions about him being on the WFP line and whatnot.

Collins will still be on the ballot for the GOP unless he is convicted prior to the general, and could still win. There are conservative small parties similar to WFP who could nominate someone who the GOP machine can campaign for but they won't have an R next to their name on the ballot. However, while there are 7 or 8 left wing small parties, there are far fewer right wing small parties, so it's possible that Collins will be the only GOP or right wing choice on the ballot. 

It does put a district in play for Dems that wouldn't ordinarily be in play. I actually expect Collins to win even without campaigning. If he resigns after winning, I'm not sure of the ramifications (appointment or special election).

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Sounds similar to the race for senator in Missouri when Gov. Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash.  He couldn't be removed from the ballot, so the interim Governor appointed his wife as Senator when Mel "won".  

That was a very weird time -- the Carnahans were close friends of my parents, and the grief over the deaths of Mel & his son Randy way outweighed any joy of victory.

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I'm hearing from my inside contacts that Collins will confess that he has been living in North Carolina all this time and thus should never have been on the ballot to begin with....Yeah it's a crime, but he might as well confess to that one too, because he's in deeper shit anyway. And if he does that, he can be replaced on the ballot, and there are any number of solid candidates waiting in line. 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...

Lulz. Never did figure out how this guy thought he was gonna get off the hook for this one. Seemed like he was busted dead to rights.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/politics/chris-collins-guilty-plea/index.html

Quote

New York Rep. Chris Collins submitted his resignation Monday ahead of his expected guilty plea Tuesday to federal charges in an insider trading case, according to the House Speaker's office, court documents and a person familiar with the matter.

Collins sent a letter of resignation Monday to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to her spokesman, who said Collins's resignation will be effective Tuesday.

 

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