Which Story Is Bigger News: Richard Burr, Andrew Gillum, Or Ilhan Omar?

Perhaps you sometimes have the impression that the American mainstream news media might be a little slanted, but you’re just not sure. If so, you might want to consider the question of the different treatment of three political scandals currently in the news: those involving Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, Democratic former candidate for Governor of Florida Andrew Gillum, and Democratic Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Unless you are a news junkie, there is probably a 50/50 chance that you are not even aware of the scandals involving Gillum and Omar. On the other hand, you would have to have been hiding in a cave the last week not to be aware of the matter involving Burr.

Let’s start with a summary of the basic facts:

• Richard Burr. At some time in early to mid-February, according to a disclosure form, Senator Burr sold something in the range of approximately $600,000 to $1.6 million in stock. Apparently, before selling the stock, Burr had received at least one government briefing on the Chinese virus situation, although the contents of the briefing have not been disclosed. Also before the sales of the stock occurred, among much other potentially alarming information about the virus situation, President Trump had restricted entry to the U.S. for travelers from China (January 31), and The WHO had declared a global health emergency (January 30), both of those obviously public information. At the end of February, after Burr’s sales and as the virus situation worsened, the stock market began a significant decline, which has now reached more than 30%

• Andrew Gillum. Gilum was the Democratic candidate for Governor of Florida in the 2018 election, at which time he was also Mayor of Florida’s capital of Tallahassee. Gillum lost the gubernatorial election by only about 32,000 votes (out of more than 8 million cast), a result so close that he delayed his concession until after a recount. He was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. Early on the morning of March 13, police were called to a hotel room in Miami where they found Gillum and two other men. Gillum and one of the men, a male escort, were badly intoxicated, and there were several bags of crystal meth in the room. Gillum was so intoxicated that he was unable to communicate with police as to what had occurred.

• Ilhan Omar. Omar was elected to represent the 5th District of Minnesota in Congress in the 2018 election. In late 2009, Omar had legally married a man named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi; and in 2017, Omar divorced Said Elmi in an ex parte proceeding in Minnesota, which required her to state under oath that she didn’t know where Said Elmi was or how to contact him. Well prior to the 2018 election that sent Omar to Congress, allegations had emerged that Omar and Said Elmi were biological brother and sister, and that their marriage was a sham designed for purposes of immigration fraud. There is extensive documentary evidence of Omar and Said Elmi being brother and sister, a good deal of which is meticulously accumulated by a guy named David Steinberg and posted by Scott Johnson in this post at Powerline. Steinberg’s evidence includes, for example (1) social media posts of Omar calling a UK resident named Leila Nur Said Elmi her sister, (2) Leila’s marriage certificate naming her father as Nur Said Elmi, (3) social media posts of Leila and Ahmed, and (4) evidence that the only three people in the UK with the names “Nur Said Elmi” are Leila, Ahmed and Nur. There’s much more than that, but go look for yourself.

OK, which of these is an important story? Consider that for a moment. Here is my take:

• Burr. This story is a total nothing. There is no theory under which this is “insider trading” of any sort. Insider trading is where you have specific knowledge of non-public information about a particular company. There is no such thing as inside information about the whole economy. Besides which, it was obvious to everybody by the beginning of February that the Chinese virus was a risk that could cause instability in the markets. I know people who sold stock before or right at the beginning of the stock decline, and they didn’t have any kind of government briefing. I considered doing the same thing myself, but I didn’t do it. Why? Because it is next to impossible to actually come out ahead trying to sell stock immediately prior to a market decline, even if you are sure that a decline is imminent. Remember that when you sell you need to pay a capital gains tax, and therefore as soon as you sell you have lost something in the range of 10 or 20% of your investment to the government. Only in very rare circumstances will you correctly guess not only that there is going to be a price decline, but that it is imminent, and also that it will exceed the 20% or so that you need to make selling a wise decision. I don’t know what was in that government briefing that Burr received (and neither does anyone else) but it strains credulity that it could have contained anything specific as to an impending 30% price decline. The bottom line is that this is the very cheapest form of “gotcha” story: With 535 members of Congress, some are selling stock at any given point in time; and all are receiving frequent briefings. So just wait until there is a 30% stock decline, and go back into the disclosures to see who sold in the last 30 days. Gotcha!

• Gillum and Omar. Both of these seem like highly newsworthy stories to me. Both Gillum and Omar have been considered rising stars in the Democratic Party. Omar has sought a leadership role in Congress on issues including the Green New Deal and relations with Israel.

As you will see, my news judgment appears to differ by approximately 180 degrees from that of our mainstream press. Let me give you a little roundup:

• Burr. It has been a total feeding frenzy., At the New York Times on March 19 it was “Senator Richard Burr Sold a Fortune in Stocks as G.O.P. Played Down Coronavirus Threat.” David Leonhart chipped in with a column headlined “They. Sold. Their. Stock. They could have made a difference, but they made a profit.” At The Washington Post on March 20 it was “Sen. Richard Burr, head of powerful committee, sold large amount of stocks before sharp declines in market.” There are dozens of others like this. And it wasn’t just the hard left press this time. Rich Moran of PJ Media got into the act on March 20: “The issue is [Burr’s] dumping $1.6 million in stock after receiving several congressional briefings on the virus, trading on his inside information about how bad things were likely to get. It doesn't get any more corrupt than that.” Even worse was Tucker Carlson of Fox News, who went on a rant in his March 19 monologue that included the following:  “He had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening, but he didn’t warn the public. . . . Instead he dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money. There is no greater moral crime than betraying your country in a time of crisis.”

• Gillum. The story got downplayed from the outset, and then disappeared quickly from the news cycle. Hey, the man deserves his privacy. At the New York Times, the March 13 story appeared on page A17, and did not even mention that the man found with Gillum was a male escort. The Miami Herald story of the same day similarly left out that salient fact, and also quoted a hastily-issued Gillum statement as saying that he had not used the drugs that were all over the hotel room. Was any actual drug test done? The only thing I have been able to find with anything approaching full coverage of the story comes from the Daily Mail of the UK.

• Omar. If the downplaying of the Gillum story appears odd, the aggressive suppression of the Omar scandal is truly bizarre. In this case, three independent journalists — Scott Johnson (of Powerline Blog), David Steinberg (formerly of PJ Media and now apparently on his own) and Preya Samsundar (of Alpha News Minnesota) — have all covered the story extensively, to the extent of providing extensive and on its face definitive documentary evidence to prove the essentials of the claim. Yet no mainstream source will touch it. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has been completely asleep at the switch. To get an idea how the story is treated, consider this February 21 post from a New York Times blog called nytimespost (apparently never appearing in the print edition), headline “Ilhan Omar blasts ‘fake news’ after story claims she married her brother.” Excerpt: “The same people who chastise the progressive movement regularly traffic in anti-Muslim smears and hate speech against me and those I represent,” the Minnesota Democrat tweeted. “It’s almost as if they don’t genuinely care about online harassment.” Needless to say they can’t be bothered fact checking Omar’s blanket denial in any respect, let alone presenting any of the available documentary evidence that has been posted by others in neatly organized form.

By now you may be getting the idea that the point of mainstream journalism is not to inform you of what is going on, but rather to assist Democrats in getting elected to political office, no matter how disqualified they may be.