Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said it’s “premature” for him to call on Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to step down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee because of a stock scandal, but urged colleagues to divest from stocks to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest.
“I haven’t seen the reports, I just read the headlines so it’s premature for me to comment on that. I don’t own any stocks. I have told my colleagues in the Senate that at the very least it creates the appearance of a conflict so it’s better not to own any,” Schumer told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” when asked whether Burr should relinquish his chairmanship.
“I cannot comment on Burr until I know the details,” he said.
The FBI seized Burr’s cellphone Wednesday as part of an insider trading investigation stemming from his sale of between $628,000 and $1.72 million worth of stock in early February, while his committee was receiving briefings about the looming threat of the coronavirus.
Asked on Thursday if senators should be banned from owning stocks, Schumer said “it creates an appearance of a conflict and I would recommend to my colleagues it’s a lot easier when they don’t own stocks.”
“I don’t own any,” he added.
Burr asked the Senate Ethics Committee in March to review his stock transactions.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) is also under scrutiny for selling about $20 million worth of stocks after attending a closed-door Senate briefing on the coronavirus in January.
She has said the trades were made by a third-party adviser and she didn’t know of them until after the fact.
Still, the freshman senator, who faces a tough special election in November, has taken a beating from one of her main opponents, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), over the sales. She announced last month that she would divest from individual stocks and convert her holdings to mutual and exchange traded funds, which reflect the markets more broadly.
Updated at 11:36 a.m.