.By Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., stepped aside as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday after the FBI served a search warrant for his phone as part of an ongoing insider-trading investigation tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the move, saying he and Burr had agreed it was in the Senate's best interests.
FBI officials showed up at Burr's home with the warrant on Wednesday, marking a significant escalation into the Justice Department's investigation into whether Burr broke the law with a well-timed sale of stocks before the coronavirus caused markets to plummet,
The Justice Department declined to comment. His attorney did not respond to phone and email messages, but said last month that the law is clear that any senator can participate in stock market trading based on public information "as Sen. Burr did."
The former Massachusetts governor, who joined the board of cannabis producer Acreage Holdings last week along with former House Speaker John Boehner, told Cheddar that once you can do research on cannabis, "the arguments against it are going to be increasingly slim."
Talking to the iconic Supreme Court Justice, who is revered in both the legal system and pop culture, is as intimidating as you would expect, say the two directors of a documentary about Ginsburg. The documentary releases on May 4.
The lawyer representing adult film actress Stormy Daniels says it is an "outrage" that President Trump attacked his client on Twitter. "I'm not going to tolerate it," Avenatti told Cheddar Thursday.
Large swaths of Puerto Rico lost power Wednesday, the second major service interruption in less than two weeks. That makes efforts to recover from Hurricane Maria even harder, says Kelly Macias, a staff writer at the Daily Kos. Thousands of people on the island have been in the dark since the storm hit in September.
In light of Facebook's data scandal, other tech companies should give users a cut of the money they made off of their information, says Brittany Kaiser, a former director of business development at data company Cambridge Analytica.
Brittany Kaiser, a former executive at the company that gained access to data on millions of Facebook users, said that the estimate of 87 million people affected is far less than the reality.
The Fox News primetime host remains unscathed even after multiple controversies, including the revelation on Monday that he sought legal advice from President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. "He pretty much plays by his own rules," says Michael Calderone, Politico's senior media reporter.
The back and forth between UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and President Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow over sanctions on Russia just reflects a major difference of opinion within the White House and "that she's a little more hawkish on issues in terms of foreign policy," says Jon Miller, CRTV's White House correspondent.
Nearly half the films debuting this year were directed by women, says Pete Torres, the festival's COO. Promoting women in the film industry "always has been part of our mission," he told Cheddar Wednesday.
Cohen has a hand in many of President Trump's dealings, from the Stormy Daniels case to potential business in Russia, says political consultant Rick Wilson. That could all be used to either flip him against Trump or put him behind bars.
