Could also be Loeffler is being investigated by SEC vs FBI. Or not at all, as you surmise. Hoping for SEC myself - shine a light on the dim grey areas of high finance.
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Counterpoint: Burr, while shifty with authoritarian tendencies, has been upholding the law on the DL and has been a major(groan) burr under the administration’s saddle. Gotta admit I am skeptical whether this holds any water …
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I’m a little more jaded when evaluating the meaning of this action.
Seizing the phone could just be part one in clearing him.
Or it could be for real. I’m keeping my poms poms at my side… at the ready.
I’ll know they’re going to get real serious when they appoint Robert Mueller to head up an investigation ./s
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Sounds dodgy. There is a sound of dodge. Why is the FBI leaking to the LA Times? Why no warrants for Loeffler and Inhofe?
An unnamed law enforcement official told the LA Times that investigators wanted to access Burr’s conversations with his stock broker.
The FBI agents had obtained the search warrant from the DOJ based partially on data they had found while examining Burr’s iCloud account, which the agents had accessed upon serving a warrant on Apple, another official told the LA Times.
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FBI Seizes Sen. Burr’s Phone In DOJ’s Investigation Into His Fishy Stock Sales
Surely they would have known the red snapper and halibut would alert officials?
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Is the ghost of Jacob Javits a possibility?
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I’m going with Marcy Wheeler.
It’s the most satisfying conjecture.
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Mnuchin is the Task Force’s Goldman Sack. Loeffler’s husband is the chairman of the stock exchange. The whole upper crust of organized capital, including the blind trust managers, were tipped off and they are the ones who appreciate the intrinsic value of other people’s hard days’ work.
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I am glad that the Putin whores infesting our filthy Department of Justice they are going after Burr for releasing the Russian election interference report. Don’t worry, this is a smoke screen by the human scum at the FBI. Their main goal is to crush any opposition. These jackbooted thugs will be coming for the democratic senators and members of congress. I would not be surprised if Biden and Biden’s family members are not arrested before the election on some sort of trumped up crime.
Makes sense. You don’t have to look for an official action to explain this. It could be personal pique, failure to grovel satisfyingly, almost anything really.
ETA I wish I could make the GOP Senators sit in front of me so I could tell them a few things. I’d say some of them have insufficient regard for the rule of law to care that he’s using the DOJ against his political enemies like any authoritarian would. But maybe they should reflect that he’s also blatantly using it against a leading Republican senator now and they should think about that and think about how quickly and capriciously he’ll turn on any other GOP person, because he likes to make people crawl, he likes to show them up as cowards. To survive in his orbit you have to go ahead and be a groveling coward, and take the consequences, which is looking more like electoral jeopardy or defeat, or you can band together and deal with this once and for all like people with some damn guts and fortitude. Yeah, you’ll enrage the base and maybe not be senators again for a while. There are worse things. Like being investigated in a system where innocence doesn’t matter. Just think about it, gang.
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I won’t tell mrs_vonholst if you don’t.
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I think that Bill Weld is still alive, and is probably still a registered republican. And as far as I know, there is no requirement that a senator be a registered voter where they are a senator.
But Roy Cooper is a smart guy, in a swing state that probably still leans a little to the Red side, not pure purple (as is e.g. WI and now probably AZ). My guess is that he picks a moderate businessperson or academic who is a registered republican but has a history of being bipartisan and is unlikely to run for reelection, or a former moderate republican mayor of someplace in their 70s, elder statesman/stateswomen unlikely to run.
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So Barr has a Burr under his saddle?..
Wait …
Oh, yeah
Burr has a Barr … no that doesn’t work either
Welp at least Burr has $1.5 million he can spend on lawyer fees.
Edit
And now Barr will mumble something about “equality before the law” or some such bullshit.
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Let’s play the “pretend to be professional” game! The DOJ and FBI aren’t going to do shit to this man. His stock sales were not fishy. They were done with insider knowledge in violation of the STOCK act. You do it and they’ll haul your ass in. This guy will walk…that’s a given.
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If Burr did this he should be charged. I’m all for that…but why HIM and not others that we know did it TOO? Is Barr ‘letting’ the FBI go after him because he wasn’t sufficiently TRUMP? How can Donnie and Barr trash the FBI with their lies, smears and insults but do this? Their are a lot of questions out there…
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They’ll have his head on a pike for the halibut.
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I was just thinking about his lawyers …
Yes, they have been poke ing at this for a while.
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Do they now? Substitute “accumulate” and I think you’ll be closer to reality.
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As a retired SEC enforcement attorney, the probable reason that Burr is in more hot water than Loeffler is that Burr called his broker directly, and forgot that all such calls are taped by the firm. So the seizure of the cell phone is just to confirm that he made the call to the broker, not someone else on his behalf.
Loeffler, on the other hand, had investment advisors do her trading. And as someone who was in the securities industry, she would have known how to cover her tracks. This would be a far more difficult case to prove.
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