Pierce: King Midas Just Touched Another Republican Congressman

[babylonsister]

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22677153/chris-collins-insider-trading-charge-donald-trump/

King Midas Just Touched Another Republican Congressman
Chris Collins was the first member of Congress to jump into bed with Trump. Now he's in a spot of bother.
By Charles P. Pierce
Aug 8, 2018


So Rick Wilson, the Republican activist, has a new book entitled Everything Trump Touches Dies. I've read it. It's funny. (Parental Guidance: There's a chapter in there about Hillary Rodham Clinton in which there is a great amount of evidence that Wilson is going to go right back to being a Republican rottweiler as soon as sanity once again reigneth in the land.) Anyway, New York Representative Chris Collins—who for months, was the only national elected official who would stand within an area code of the future president*—allegedly is fully on board with the marketing strategy laid out by Wilson's publisher.

That must have taken some doing. From The New York Times:

The charges against Mr. Collins stem from his involvement with Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited, a drug maker based in Sydney, Australia, whose primary business was the research and development of a medication designed to treat a form of multiple sclerosis, according to an indictment.

Mr. Collins, 68, was attending the Congressional Picnic at the White House in June 2017 when he received a private email from the company’s chief executive that a test for a potentially lucrative experimental drug had failed, the indictment said. Fifteen minutes later, the congressman, who sat on the firm’s board of directors and was one of its largest shareholders, called his son, Cameron Collins, who sold his shares in the company, avoiding losses of more than $570,000, the indictment said. Mr. Collins did not sell his own shares, the indictment said.

No matter what Robert Mueller comes up with in his investigation, this may stand as the perfect Trump Era crime. Stop and savor it for a moment. The allegation is that Collins scrambled to a phone at Trump's picnic so he and his son would waste no time in violating securities laws. At least we know Collins's host would understand the urgency of something like this.

Mr. Collins was the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, in February 2016, and that decision transformed him from a backbench member to one of the few lawmakers with any kind of relationship with the president after Mr. Trump won the White House that November. Early in the Trump administration, he served as an informal liaison for the White House to Capitol Hill and would brag about how the president would call him on his cellphone unannounced. His endorsement also helped make Mr. Collins a fixture on cable television, with numerous appearances on the CNN program of Chris Cuomo.

That sound you hear from the Rose Garden is a cock crowing, three times.

[DinahMoeHum]

1. Re that last sentence. . .and "jump into bed with Trump"

"cock crowing"