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US Senator Richard Burr has had his mobile phone seized by federal agents as part of the Justice Department’s probe into stock transactions made by the politician before the sharp market downturn triggered by the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, US media said late on Wednesday.
Burr reportedly sold roughly $1.7m in stocks shortly before the economic downturn from the coronavirus pandemic began.
Burr, a Republican, has denied any wrongdoing and said he relied solely on news reports to guide decisions on stock sales amid reports that he and other senators sold shares after being briefed on the risks of the coronavirus crisis.
The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on him at his Washington, DC home, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement official.
A separate law enforcement official told the LA Times that the FBI also served a warrant recently to iPhone maker Apple Inc to get information from Burr‘s iCloud account.
Law enforcement agents used data received from the company as part of the evidence used to obtain the warrant for the senator’s phone, the report added.
The Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, declined to comment on the report. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
CNN reported in March that the Justice Department had started to investigate a series of stock transactions made by Burr before the market downturn triggered by the virus outbreak. The probe was done in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Burr has experience in responding to public health crises and is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which receives briefings about threats to the US.
The senator also came under fire in March after a recording surfaced wherein he stated the danger posed by the coronavirus was akin to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” Burr said in the recording. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
