Ousted U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was overseeing an investigation into current Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s stock trades when he was fired, according to an unnamed source cited by ProPublica Friday.
According to a source “familiar with the office,” ProPublica reported, Bharara’s employees were looking into stock trades made by Price, seemingly those that came to light during his confirmation process.
Before and during his confirmation hearing, Democrats accused Price of abusing his office for his own personal benefit, perhaps illegally.
Price bought stock in Zimmer Biomet the same month, March 2016, that he introduced legislation to delay the implementation of a measure that would have negatively affected that company.
And executives for Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. confirmed to the Wall Street Journal in late January that Price had been offered discounted shares in the company by invitation of Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), who owns a 17 percent stake in it. The Australian biotech company is trying to elbow its way into the American market. Price denied any wrongdoing to the Senate Finance Committee, and was eventually confirmed in the Senate on a party-line vote.
As a congressman, Price chaired the House Budget Committee and sat on the Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Health.
Bharara was fired after refusing to resign along with all remaining U.S. attorneys who had been appointed by the Obama administration. Asking U.S. attorneys to resign is standard for new administrations, but Bharara said in January, after meeting with then-President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, that he had been promised that he would keep his job.
As U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, Bharara held a prominent position as the top federal prosecutor on Wall Street. Watchdog groups called on him in March to investigate Russian business ties to Trump that could violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Bharara’s former office is now in the middle of an inquiry into Fox News.
