Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Burr contacted him yesterday morning to inform of his decision to step aside temporarily during the investigation.
“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,” McConnell said in a statement.
Burr had denied wrongdoing and said he relied solely on news reports to guide decisions on stock sales, amid reports that he and other senators sold shares after private briefings on the risks of the coronavirus crisis.
He told reporters at the US Capitol yesterday that he decided to step aside because he did not want the investigation to distract the intelligence committee from its work.
“I thought this was the best thing to do,” Burr said.
The Republican senator turned over his phone to FBI agents after they served a search warrant at his Washington home.
The warrant marked a significant step-up in the investigation of Burr’s stock sales in mid-February, when he and other lawmakers were getting regular briefings on the coronavirus outbreak and President Donald Trump and some of his political allies were downplaying the threat to the public.
Trump said he did not know anything about Burr’s decision.
“I know nothing about it ... that’s too bad,” he told reporters.
A senior Justice Department official said the FBI did not conduct a raid, but paid a visit to Burr’s home to collect his cell phone.
Approval of the warrant – a significant development because it was served on a sitting senator – was obtained at the “highest levels” of the Justice Department, the official said.
Reuters could not immediately learn precisely when the search warrant was executed.
The seizure was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
The Intelligence Committee chairmanship is one of the most important positions in the Senate.
As overseer of US intelligence, the committee is near completion of an extensive report on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US presidential election.
US intelligence determined that Moscow sought to meddle in the campaign to boost Trump candidacy.
Moscow denies such actions.
Trump dismisses the allegations as a hoax.
Quoting law enforcement officials, the Los Angeles Times also reported that the FBI had accessed Burr’s personal files on his i-Cloud account in the investigation, and this information led them to the phone.
NBC News also reported on the cellphone seizure, citing an unnamed senior law enforcement official.
Burr himself wrote on the Fox News website on February 7 that the US government was “better prepared than ever” for the coronavirus, assuring Americans that they were well-protected.
But as President Donald Trump repeatedly said the virus would not hit the United States hard, on February 13 the North Carolina senator and his wife suddenly sold off at least $628,000 and as much as $1.7mn in stocks, the ProPublica media group revealed in March, citing financial filings.
On the same day, Burr’s brother-in-law sold as much as $280,000 worth of shares, ProPublica reported last week.
Two weeks later Trump told the public that the 15 cases so far reported could be the US peak.
The same day Burr, who receives much of the same intelligence that the White House does, told a private gathering of wealthy donors that coronavirus was a threat like the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed tens of millions.
“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said.
Neither Burr’s office nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment on the news report.
Stock markets have plunged as the disease swept the world.
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