Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), two prominent members of the far-left “Squad,” have publicly expressed support for Tucker Carlson’s call for Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) to resign for purportedly dumping up to $1.7 million in stock after receiving confidential coronavirus briefings.
The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman reportedly unloaded “between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions,” according to ProPublica. Those transactions coincided with the intelligence committee receiving daily briefings on the spread and threat of the coronavirus.
Fox News’s Carlson forcefully called for Burr to resign during Thursday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight — a call both Omar and Ocasio-Cortez appeared to publicly support.
“I am 100% with him on this,” Omar wrote alongside an emoji, expressing her shock:
Ocasio-Cortez also seemed to signal support:
“You may have seen news reports this afternoon that chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee sold more than a million dollars in stock in mid-February after learning about how devastating the Chinese coronavirus could be,” Carlson said Thursday evening.
“He had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening,” he continued. “But he didn’t warn the public. He didn’t give a primetime address. He didn’t go on television to sound the alarm.”
“He didn’t even disavow an op-ed he’d written just 10 days before claiming America was ‘better prepared than ever for coronavirus,” he added.
He continued:
He didn’t do any of those things. Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money, and then he stayed silent. Maybe there is an honest explanation for what he did. If there is, he should share it with the rest of us immediately. Otherwise, he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading. There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time crisis, and that appears to be what happened.
Burr released a statement on Friday, claiming that he relied “solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks on February 13.”
“Specifically, I closely followed CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time,” he continued, adding that he asked the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee to “open a complete review of the matter with full transparency”: