Remember back in the dark ages of 2020 when the sky was black and the president was orange? There was a drug called Remdesivir, which Trump took after being diagnosed with COVID-19. The then-president was so enamored by the drug that he boasted about it and even bought up all of the stock for Americans. The drug was controversial, but it was approved and appeared to show signs of helping those with the coronavirus recover faster.
On Wednesday, America learned that Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator with the softest white-man Jheri curl, disclosed that his wife purchased up to $15,000 worth of shares in Gilead in February 2020. Who is Gilead you ask? Oh, just the biotech company that makes Remdesivir.
From the New York Post:
Paul’s mandatory filing with the Senate shows that his wife purchased between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of Gilead stock on Feb. 26, 2020.
Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir became the first COVID-19 specific treatment to win an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration less than three months after the purchase in May 2020.
Paul’s disclosure raised eyebrows among government ethics experts, especially because it came a whopping 16 months later than legally required.
Paul’s lack of transparency violates the STOCK Act, which was created in 2012 just for this exact issue in which Congress members have access to information that could change the prices of stock, and as such, they are required to disclose trades within 45 days.
“The senator ought to have an explanation for the trade and, more importantly, why it took him almost a year and a half to discover it from his wife,” James Cox, a law professor at Duke University, told the Washington Post.
What makes all of this even more sinister is that Paul has been one of the leading voices against folks getting vaccinated. (YouTube just suspended his account.) And I’m sure Paul didn’t mean it this way but the more folks that get COVID-19 the more folks may need and use Remdesivir.
But, of course, there is an easy explanation to all of this: Paul forgot.
“Last year Dr. Paul completed the reporting form for an investment made by his wife using her own earnings, an investment which she has lost money on. This was done in the appropriate reporting time window,” Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, explained in a statement to CNN.
“In the process of preparing to file his annual financial disclosure for last year, he learned that the form was not transmitted and promptly alerted the filing office and requested their guidance. In accordance with that guidance he filed both reports today.”
Because God has a sense of humor, “Paul’s wife lost money on the investment. On the day of Paul’s wife’s purchase, Gilead stock opened the day at $71.32 per share. On Wednesday, it ended the day at $69.84,” the New York Post reports.