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In an exceptional decision, a judge has authorized the United States police to take possession of the mobile phone of Republican Senator Richard Burr, one of the most influential lawmakers in the country, as part of the investigation for his alleged use of privileged information to enrich himself with the coronavirus crisis.

This Thursday, Burr has unexpectedly announced that he is stepping down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee , one of the most powerful positions in that chamber. "We have agreed that his decision is in the best interest of the Committee," said Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

Burr is not the only senator of the party in the government that carried out stock market operations that benefited him in the days before the explosion of the pandemic in the United States. As reported by investigative journalism websites ProPublica and NPR radio - the equivalent of National Radio in the United States - last February the senator, his wife and brother-in-law began selling shares while Burr was publicly claiming and in articles from Opinion sent to the media that the situation was under control.

At the same time, the senator told a group of donors that they had paid $ 10,000 (9,200 euros) to meet with him that the coronavirus crisis was going to be "like the 1918 flu," in which some 50 million people died. , that is, approximately 3% of the world population.

On February 13 alone, Burr and his wife, Brooke Fauth, made 33 different stock sales in which stock shed between $ 628,000 and $ 1.27 million (from € 582,000 to $ 1.18 million). Burr's brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, who works for the National Arbitration Committee, sold between $ 97,000 and $ 280,000 (from € 90,000 to € 260,000) in shares.

Other scandals

Burr is one of three senators who in 2012 voted against a law that prohibited US lawmakers from using the information they have obtained in office to decide whether to buy or sell financial assets. Although his case is not unique. Nor is it the most extreme. Kelly Loeffler , Republican senator from Georgia, sold 3.2 million dollars in shares (3 million euros) after a closed-door meeting with senior officials in which she was informed of the economic consequences of Covid-19.

Loeffler also bought shares in the Citrix company, which makes software used in teleconferencing, a communication system that has been triggered by the confinement of the coronavirus, and whose value has risen 40% since the pandemic hit . In that time, the Standard and Poor's index of large US companies has fallen 20%. Loeffler's case is also more curious because her husband is Jeffrey Sprecher, the president of the New York Stock Exchange.

Another senator who sold shares just before the arrival of the coronavirus is fellow Republican David Perdue, who also bought securities from the DuPont company, which makes special protective suits (so-called PPE) whose demand has skyrocketed among medical personnel. Democrat Diane Fenstein has also been accused of carrying out similar actions.

The senators' scandals occur in a context of increasing politicization of the coronavirus . Attention today has been focused on the House of Representatives, where Rick Bright testified, who was dismissed three weeks ago from the position of director of the Biomedical R&D Authority, the main public research group in the US for a vaccine against the illness. Bright has accused the Donald Trump government of dismissing him in retaliation for his repeated alerts about the country's lack of preparedness to deal with the pandemic.

A few hours earlier, sources in Washington had leaked to The Wall Street Journal that China and Iran had stolen information from US companies and public institutions about the fight against the coronavirus.

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