CNN, getting itself in trouble with the Trump team again:

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Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company.

Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet...Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation...

After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company's political action committee donated to the congressman's reelection campaign, records show.

Price says that his broker did the deal without his knowledge. How about that. Do you have a broker that buys $15K of a single company's stock without your knowledge? How about if it's a health care company, if you happen to sit on the Health Subcommittee of Ways and Means? Doesn't that stretch plausible deniability a teensy bit?

How about this one?

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Price purchased shares totaling between $60,000 and $110,000 in value in Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biotech company. Innate has no approved drugs and one multiple sclerosis drug in trials. Fellow legislator Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) is the largest single shareholder in the company and sits on the board and two of Collins' adult children are the company’s third- and fourth-biggest shareholders.

[Price purchased between $50K-100K of their stock] in a private placement in August 2016, paying $.25 and $.34 per share. The shares at the close of trading on January 13, 2017, were priced at $1.31 for 300-400% unrealized gains in a half-year. If the HHS nomination proceeds Price intends to sell several health care investments including Innate.

It's called quadruple your money in 6 months, in a private discount deal offered to GOP Reps pulling health care strings. Man, I'd sell it too, considering the company currently has no salable product.

Yeah, but Hillary's cattle futures, tho.

Yeah, I forgot that Hillary had that term as cattle commissioner.

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pdq
Yeah, I forgot that Hillary had that term as cattle commissioner.

How can anyone forget the Cowgirl Hillary scandal?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is lots more money to be made by Trumpsters.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

Today Tom Price (MD, by the way) said gosh, he has no idea what stocks he owns.

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"I have no idea what stocks I held in the '90s or the 2000s or even now," Price said. "All of these decisions for all of us I suspect, are through mutual funds and through pension funds."

Except they weren't. The purchase of Zimmer Biomet was an individual stock, four days before he introduced legislation to help them duck a proposed CMS regulation. After which Zimmer Biomet made a political contribution back to Price.

And the big moneymaker, the Innate Immunotherapeutics buy, was a private, discounted stock offering. As noted above, the biggest single shareholder and board member was a fellow Republican congressman.

Is this legal? Maybe. But it stinks, and Price knows it, or he wouldn't be making up patently false claims of ignorance. Don't insult us.

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pdq
Don't insult us.

Well, any more than they already have, at least.