Senator Richard Burr (R., N.C.) on Thursday stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee during an investigation into allegations that Burr engaged in insider trading.
“Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step aside as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of the investigation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. “We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee.”
GOP Conference rules require members to step down from leadership positions if indicted on felony charges, so Burr will be allowed to remain on the Intelligence Committee in a regular capacity.
FBI agents served Burr a warrant to search his Washington, D.C., area home and confiscate his cell phone as part of the Justice Department’s investigation.
Burr sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in stocks on February 13, after receiving a classified briefing in January on the emergent coronavirus in China. The senator has claimed that he made the trades based on publicly available information.
On February 27, Burr described the coronavirus outbreak in bleak terms at a gathering of the Tar Heel Association, a non-partisan group of North Carolina businessmen.
“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 comments obtained by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.