Mixed Emotions

It's a big deal when the FBI formally serves a warrant to someone that they are investigation.

It's an even bigger deal when they seize the phone of the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said.

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

It's interesting, because authorization for this had to come from the most senior levels of the Department of Justice, meaning Attorney General William Barr, a man who has exhibited no interest whatsoever in pursuing this sort of corruption.

What's more, there have been no similar serving of warrants to Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who is objectively in an even more egregiously compromised position:

In late February and early March, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) sold stocks valued at between $1.25 million and $3.1 million in companies that later dropped significantly, including ExxonMobil. She also bought shares in Citrix, which makes telework software.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat to fill a vacancy and faces an election later this year, said after the sales became public that she and her husband would divest all individual stocks.

Why would William Barr do this when it is so out of character, and not go after the least senior member of the Senate?

Perhaps because Burr has temporarily stepped down as Chairman of the Intel Committee, and Burr has bee working to release a declassified version of his committee's report of Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign:

………


The public evidence again Burr is quite damning, so there’s no question that this is a properly predicated investigation.

Still, coming from a DOJ that has gone to great lengths to protect other looting (and has not taken similar public steps against Kelly Loeffler), the move does raise questions.

Particularly given the focus that Richard Burr gave, during the John Ratcliffe confirmation hearing, to getting the final volume of the SSCI Report on 2016 declassified and released by August.

………

If Richard Burr is prepping to reverse his prior public comments about “collusion,” it might explain why the Bill Barr DOJ, which has stopped hiding that it is an instrument used to enforce political loyalty to Trump, would more aggressively investigate Burr than others.

Again, there’s no question that this is a properly predicated investigation. But in the Barr DOJ, properly predicated investigations about political allies of Trump all get quashed. This one has, instead, been aggressively and overtly pursued.

This is a political hit against a guilty man conducted by the most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States.

On the other hand, Burr is as guilty as hell.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯