Tag: insider

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Briefing By AOC & Fellow Dems On Banning Stock Trading By Members Of Congress

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Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-NY) joined fellow Democrats for a briefing(04/07/22) on their push to ban stock trading by members of Congress. Others on the briefing were Senator Jeff Merkley(D-OR), Rep Joe Neguse(D-CO), Rep Rashida Tlaib(D-MI), Rep Abigail Spanberger(D-VA), Rep Pramila Jayapal(D-WA), Rep Andy Kim(D-NJ) and Rep Angie Craig(D-MN).

Rep Ocasio-Cortez said banning stock trading by members of Congress will not only address legitimate concerns about conflicts of interest, but that it would also tackle the other urgent problem involving crisis of faith in our institutions. She said: “We are also tackling a crisis of faith in our institutions in the United States, and that exploitation of that crisis of faith is a direct threat to our democracy, as we have seen over the last two to four years. It is our responsibility to ensure that we eliminate that perception of impropriety, because it is these perceptions that can be exploited to undermine our most sacred institutions.”

The final speaker, the epitome of “save the best for last”, was Minnesota’s Rep Angie Craig(remember that name folks, vivacious Angie is going up the Dem ladder). She said: “My background experience in this issue is I actually sat on a corporate executive team for 12 years before I came to Congress, and this is not hypothetical to me, it’s not hypothetical. I helped run the investor relations department of a major fortune 500 company. I know that information moves markets, and it moves stocks. That’s why when I first got here, I wrote something called the Humble Act, which as part of it, would ban members of Congress from owning individual stocks. And it’s also not hypothetical to me because before I was sworn in to Congress, I had stock from the company I had worked for for 12 years. I had stock options from that company as well. Every single one of those shares were sold in the open market before I stepped foot into the U.S. Capitol, every single one. And if we can’t find 535 people in the damn United States of America, who are willing to give up their personal stock portfolio in order to serve their constituents, then shame on us, just shame on us.”

Bottom line folks, as some of the speakers here pointed out, banning stock trading by members of Congress should be a no-brainer, and no Democrat should be opposed to it. Opposing a stock trading ban for members of Congress is bad optics, bad morally, bad politics, and a sure loser at the polls this Fall. It’s really that simple.

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Who Is Caroline Wren, The Shadowy Trump Insider Behind DC Insurrection?

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On the right is an image of Caroline Wren from an October 2018 Politico piece celebrating her birthday

As the stories about the January 6th DC insurrection keep coming out, and the public keeps inquiring about the people who may have orchestrated the event, the name Caroline Wren, a Trump insider and fundraiser, keeps popping up. Caroline Wren apparently played a very significant role in organizing Trump’s January 6th rally, which ultimately led to the infamous insurrection at the Capitol building. Like many political operatives in Washington, Wren maintains a low public profile, and is therefore relatively unknown to people outside Washington, DC. Politico however featured her birthday in October 2018, proving without a doubt, that she is a mover and shaker in DC political circles.

A January 30th ProPublica piece , which delved into people in Trump’s orbit who were intricately involved in the planning of his January 6th rally, has shed more light into shadowy Caroline Wren’s political activities, and importantly, established Wren as the central planner of the rally. Below is an excerpt from the ProPublica piece.

From what we can piece up from this ProPublica piece about Caroline Wren, she served as a deputy to Kimberly Guilfoyle at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign. Kimberly as you know, is Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend. According to ProPublica, much of the planning for Trump’s January 6th rally was originally in the hands of one Cindy Chafian. Ms. Chafian was however abruptly pushed aside after a Publix Six Markets heiress, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, committed $300,000 to the event, on condition that Caroline Wren was made the main event planner. Heiress Fancelli essentially booted out Cindy Chafian for Caroline Wren, an issue that begs for further scrutiny by the mainstream media. Interestingly, right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who is currently under investigation over his role in the insurrection, was also involved in the decision to ditch Cindy Chafian for Caroline Wren.

There’s also an interesting tidbit from this Twitter handle “The Warning Bell”, which shows Caroline Wren’s close ties to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and defense contractors. Senator Graham as you know, is a very close ally of former President Trump. As a matter of fact, a plausible argument can be made that it was Senator Graham, together with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who gave birth to the “stop the steal” movement, given the way they egged Trump on to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election immediately after it became apparent that Trump was headed for defeat. Did Caroline Wren’s ties to Lindsey Graham and defense contractors have anything to do with the strange insistence that she be the primary organizer of Trump’s January 6th rally? Is this why there were a lot of military undertones at the insurrection?

Bottom line folks, there is no question that the January 6th DC Insurrection was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy, even though it failed to achieve it’s ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government. Where, as here, Caroline Wren appears to have been a key player in the organization and financing of the event that led to the insurrection, reasonable people will agree that the FBI needs to seriously interrogate her. There have been reports that there was a meeting at Trump’s DC hotel on the night of Jan 5th, featuring some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Did Caroline Wren attend this meeting? Was this the final “huddle up” before the January 6th insurrection? Simply put folks, Caroline Wren must be confronted with these, and many other questions related to the DC insurrection. You can rest assured that unlike the short-attention-spanned mainstream media, Yours Truly, your trusted dog hound, will annoyingly dig into Caroline Wren’s role in DC insurrection, until we get to the bottom of it.

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Is Barr’s DOJ Targeting Sen Burr To Thwart His TrumpRussia Collusion Findings?

Senator Richard Burr(R-NC) and U.S. Attorney General William Barr (right)

On Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS), host Maddow advanced a provocative theory as to the real reason Attorney General Barr’s Department of Justice (DOJ) may be going after senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr(R-NC) for possible covid-19 insider trading. According to Maddow, DOJ and by extension AG Barr’s pursuit of senator Burr may have very little to do with the serious covid-19 insider trading allegations, and more to do with the fact that senator Burr was getting ready to release the final installment of his committee’s findings on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election.

Host Rachel Maddow said, “As bad as the insider trading allegations are against Senator Burr, we also simultaneously have to worry whether the U.S. justice department under Attorney General William Barr might be targeting Senator Burr for reasons that are less about insider trading and more about convenience to the Trump administration. Sen Burr you will recall, has led the only functional bipartisan congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. His committee’s findings have supported the intelligence community’s conclusions that for example, Russia interfered in the 2016 election to support Donald Trump’s candidacy. That is something President Trump continues to deny as recently as an interview that aired this morning. More to the point though, Senator Burr’s committee is set to release it’s final report on the Russia issue in the coming months and that last installment we are expecting is on ‘possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.’ That’s what Burr is working on right now, but he’s had to step down as chair of the committee.”

As Maddow correctly points out, given AG Barr’s demonstrable pattern of acting as president Trump’s personal defense attorney, it is not entirely implausible for one to conclude that the AG’s pursuit of senator Burr is also about defending Trump from a potentially damning senate intelligence committee finding that the Trump campaign did indeed collude with Russia in 2016. Maddow also correctly points out that an investigation into a sitting U.S. senator, especially one who chairs the powerful senate intelligence committee, must have been approved at the very highest levels of DOJ meaning AG Barr’s footprints are all over this.

Bottom line folks, AG Barr has so tarnished DOJ’s reputation that even when it undertakes a valid high profile criminal prosecution like senator Burr’s, the general perception among members of the public is that it must have something to do with helping president Trump politically. The very same thing happened during Jeffrey Epstein’s high profile criminal prosecution. I will say again what I have repeatedly stated before and that is, the only way DOJ can cure its tarnished reputation is for career officials within the DOJ to pressure AG Barr to step aside. Because it is highly unlikely that Trump will ever push aside his trusted defender, the onus is on career DOJ officers to begin demanding that AG Barr step down for the good of the department. Simply put, continued silence by career DOJ officials regarding AG Barr’s conduct at this juncture is tantamount to complicity.

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