Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has apparently been cleared by an investigation into charges he engaged in illegal insider trading. Richard Powelson of the Knoxville News Sentinel reports:
In the end, Bill Frist's habit of frequent e-mails helped document the former Senate Republican leader's account that he was not involved in insider trading in his 2005 sale of HCA Inc. stock.
The former Tennessee senator was able to show in copies of e-mails given to federal investigators that he began the process of selling his family's HCA stock in April 2005 - well before HCA had disappointing second-quarter earnings and publicly reported that fact July 13, two people familiar with Frist's records said Friday.Frist disclosed in a written statement recently that he had received letters from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York saying they had closed their investigations and were taking no action against him.
Read the whole article at the link above. The charges always seemed trumped-up to me; the rules insiders must follow in reporting sales or purchases of stock are fairly stringent. Not to say they aren't violated, but those violations are usually found. The sort of fellow who, despite being worth millions, would attempt to make a few more from improper trading most likely wouldn't be spending the amounts of his own money Frist does to fly himself and sophisticated medical equipment to Africa to perform complicated heart surgeries for free.
I'm not holding my breath waiting to see the national Old Media reporting this with the same fervor which accompanied their reports of the allegations against him.
Thanks to Power Line for pointing to this story.
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Congress, Republican, Scandal
Tags: congress, corruption, Frist, investigation
