Kate Bolduan gives a fresh take on todays top stories. Zeldin. This is a very serious allegation. He misunderstands, i think, that his failure to directly sell his own shares is whats at issue. Whats at issue is his provision of nonpublic information to his son and another so that they could cut their losses in their sales. That violates the mail fraud statutes, securities fraud statutes, and there is not really much of a defense if in fact the facts in the allegation are true. Michael, this is sdny indicting a sitting member of Congress Months before an election. We know prosecutors are confident but i mean how airtight does this case need to be . Well, two things. First, we know from the from that which happened during the last 2016 election that youre
not supposed to bring indictments against congressman and other political people within 60 days. So they just sort of snuck under the 60day donor election statute. Just. Yeah. But the fact is that, you treat public corruption in the sa
trades. it is worth noting that when this trial failed, when it became public that it failed, chris collins got crushed. there were headlines, as the biggest shareholder in this company the stock price plummeted 90%-some. yeah. afterwards he said, this wasn t a good thing. they ll clearly defend him robustly and that s clearly the area they are going on but it is a daily indictment which is why they brought it, to be honest. i do think it is worth noting. michael touched on this. there is a political and there is a legal course these things will travel. political course remember back to ted stevens. he was indicted alaska senator indicted. he wound up losing that election. then it comes out later that, well, he s actually been cleared of the charges. so the legal process and the political process do not always line up. the political process can hurt you even when the legal process remains in progress.
lead. if you don t follow this day in and day out like the three of us do, even if you do, the idea you could be on a board, and as he proudly touts, be the biggest shareholder in a company that you are on the committee that has some level of jurisdiction over smells fishy. that doesn t mean it was illegal on its face. but smells fishy. if you are chris collins, or if you are republicans generally, this is a district just from the politics of it p isn t it like the reddest district? new york? chris collins was one of donald trump s earliest supporters. everything east of buffalo proper is in this district. donald trump won it 60%-35% effectively. chris collins was with donald trump because i think he recognized in donald trump a message that had real power in his community. that said, this is a district that it s been redistricted a little bit, but this is a
a bombshell from businessman elon musk. the tesla ceo says he wants to take his company private once again and tesla s board says it s looking at the options. what is going on here? chief business correspondent christine romans is live from the new york stock exchange with more on this. what do you make of this? it s a fascinating he s had a very cranky relationship with wall street. the wall street analysts for some time. he s got this big, broad vision. when he can t meet some of his production goals, wall street tends to be critical of him. and he doesn t like these short sellers. these are investors who come in and sell a stock they don t own and profit from basically not having a vision in the company. he says in a tweet yesterday which shocked everyone, he said that he has the funding prepared to take his company private at $420 a share.
correspondent, phil mattingly. collins has been under investigation on the hill with regard to this company. this is separate from any insider trading question. for a while. what we heard from the congressman to wolf blitzer is a perfect summation of what we ve seen from him on capitol hill. he would pitch his colleagues about this. he was the only member he has stepped down in i believe april. he was the only member of congress who is a sitting member of a company board. he was on the committee that oversees what this company does. there were allegations, which he long denied, that he had been involved in trying to write pieces of legislation to aid this company. there were also during the office of congressional ethics investigation clear e-mails and evidence that he was meeting with officials from the national institute of health to essentially talk about this company, as well. you talk about kind of the long run of people wondering and thinking this doesn t