 |
| Mark Wilson/Getty Images |
"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” McConnell said in a statement Thursday.
"We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day tomorrow," said McConnell.
Earlier, the senator’s cellphone was seized by federal agents Wednesday night from a search order that came from a Justice Department investigation into his stock trades he made when the coronavirus first hit the U.S., a law enforcement official told the Los Angeles Times.
The Los Angeles Times cited unnamed officials and said one official served a previous warrant to obtain information from Burr’s iCloud account. The official told the paper that the Justice Department was reviewing communication between Burr and his broker.
The warrant would require probable cause that a crime occurred and the search would yield significant evidence, as well as getting a sign-off from a top official at the Department of Justice.
The event that aroused suspicion is when Burr, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his wife sold 33 stocks on February 13th. Slate shared the trades are worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million. Burr’s brother, a Trump administration appointee, sold as much as $280,000 in stock. In February, he received closed-door briefs about the novel coronavirus before the markets sunk.
Burr has disputed any wrongdoing — saying that he took public information-based decisions. Additionally, once the sales were made public, he asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate them.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel, R-KY., announced that Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL., will serve as the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee while an investigation into Burr’s stock is underway.
"I am glad to announce that Senator Marco Rubio has accepted my invitation to serve as Acting Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence," McConnell said in a statement.
This article was last updated on May 18, 2020 at 1:29 PM ET