Chris Collins Resigns Ahead of Insider Trading Guilty Plea

Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY) resigned from his seat effective Monday ahead of an expected guilty plea for insider trading.

Collins resigned Tuesday as he is reportedly expected to plead guilty Tuesday to insider trading relating to investments in an Australian biotech firm.

Cameron Collins, Collins’ son, as well as Stephen Zarsky, another defendant, will also allegedly plead guilty later this week to insider trading.

Neither Collins’ congressional office nor his lead attorney responded to requests for comment from Politico.

Collins won reelection last fall despite being under indictment for insider trading. The New York Republican was charged in August 2018 with securities fraud, wire fraud, and making false statements to the FBI.

Collins was the largest investor and a member of the board of directors of Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biotech company. Prosecutors charged Collins with passing inside information to his son and Zarsky, the father of Cameron Collins’ fiancée. Collins’ son and Zarsky reportedly managed to escape hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses after a drug trial failed.

Collins’ reported guilty plea serves as another victory for Peter Schweizer, Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) president, who has led a years-long battle against congressional insider trading. Schweizer wrote Throw Them All Out in 2011, which details how politicians get rich off insider trading stock tips.

Schweizer has pushed for the passing of the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which bans congressional insider trading and increases financial transparency for lawmakers, members of the executive branch, and their staffs.

Schweizer, also the author of Secret Empires, has revealed research regarding former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his relationship with a Ukrainian oil company.

Schweizer said on Sunday that a Ukrainian gas company paid Hunter Biden for access to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.

“The key question here that nobody seems to want to ask in the media is: What was he being paid for? He wasn’t being paid for his expertise. What was he being paid for? And what were the Ukrainians expecting to get in return?” Schweizer stated.

“I think when you overlay the financial payments with the fact that Joe Biden as point person on Obama administration policy to Ukraine was steering billions of dollars of Western money to Ukraine, it becomes crystal clear exactly why they were paying him money,” he added. “They wanted access, and they wanted to influence Joe Biden. And Joe Biden has been around a long time here, and he had to know exactly why his son was being paid.”