Campaign Action
The Wall Street Journal, yes that WSJ, is again reporting on Rep. Tom Price's big ol' ethics issues. This time it's about how he lied when testifying before Senate committees examining his fitness to be Secretary of Health and Human Services in President Bannon's popular vote loser Donald Trump's administration.
Rep. Tom Price got a privileged offer to buy a biomedical stock at a discount, the company’s officials said, contrary to his congressional testimony this month.
The Georgia Republican tapped by President Donald Trump to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services testified in his Senate confirmation hearings on Jan. 18 and 24 that the discounted shares he bought in Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. , an Australian medical biotechnology company, “were available to every single individual that was an investor at the time.”
In fact, the cabinet nominee was one of fewer than 20 U.S. investors who were invited last year to buy discounted shares of the company—an opportunity that, for Mr. Price, arose from an invitation from a company director and fellow congressmen.
The shares were discounted 12% off the traded price in mid-June only for investors who participated in a private placement arranged to raise money to complete a clinical trial. The company’s shares have tripled since the offering.
The deal that Price got, the deal that he said all investors got was in fact made to "all" investors—in Australia and New Zealand. Not in the U.S. Price was just one of six U.S. investors who got what Rep. Chris Collins—the colleague who told him about the company—called a "friends-and-family" deal, reserved for those who "meet the definition of sophisticated financial investor." That he was a powerful member of Congress who could influence U.S. pharmaceutical policy must have had nothing to do with it.
Nonetheless, "Senate Republicans said they are optimistic about Mr. Price’s confirmation," even though he lied to them in his confirmation hearings. Senate Democrats should be united behind both voting against this nominee and in doing everything in their power to delay this nomination—and all the others—for as long as they can.