Feinstein talks with FBI about her husband's stock trades

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has turned over documents to the FBI and answered questions from law-enforcement officials about her husband’s controversial stock trades, a spokesman for the California Democrat said on Thursday.

Feinstein, a former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke with the agency “voluntarily” and “provided additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husband’s transactions,” the spokesman added.

Feinstein has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the transactions.

Her husband, Richard Blum, is an investment banker who reportedly sold his shares in a biotech company in January before the coronavirus crisis sent the stock market into a tailspin. The transaction was reported in Feinstein’s routine Senate financial disclosure forms, and her spokesman said at the time the senator has no involvement in her husband’s stock trades.

The issue has come to the forefront in recent weeks as other senators have come under scrutiny for their stock trades, prompting allegations of insider trading. The 2012 STOCK Act prohibits lawmakers and aides from buying and selling stocks based on information obtained through their official duties.

On Thursday, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) stepped down from his post as chairman of the Intelligence Committee a day after the FBI served a warrant for his cellphone in connection with the agency’s investigation into Burr’s own stock trades, which came around the same time he was receiving briefings about the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York Times first reported that the FBI had reached out to Feinstein. Another lawmaker who has faced scrutiny over her stock trades, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), declined to answer questions Thursday about whether she has been contacted by the FBI.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.