Trump supporters reject Chris Collins’ ‘swampy behavior’, Charlie Kirk says
Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk said Saturday that Rep. Chris Collins is making the right decision to suspend his re-election campaign after being charged with insider trading earlier this week.
“Just looking at the facts and of course presuming his innocence … it’s a pretty tough case for him to overcome, just in the public arena, not in the legal realm,” Kirk told “Cavuto Live.”
Collins, a Republican representing New York’s 27th congressional district, said in a statement posted on Twitter that he would suspend his re-election bid but will continue to serve the remainder of his current term and continue fighting the “meritless charges.”
“I have decided that it is in the best interests of the constituents of NY-27, the Republican Party and President Trump’s agenda for me to suspend my campaign for re-election to Congress,” the statement read. “I will fill out the remaining few months of my term to assure that our community maintains its vote in Congress to support President Trump’s agenda to create jobs, eliminate regulations, reduce the size of government, address immigration and lower taxes.”
The New York congressman was arrested on Wednesday after he, his son, Cameron, and another individual, were charged with insider trading. Collins served on the board of Australian pharmaceutical company Innate Immunotherapeutics and was charged with passing confidential information regarding negative clinical trial results for the company’s multiple sclerosis drug to his son in June, so he could sell the stock before the bad news was made public, according to the indictment.
Over the course of the next two trading days, Cameron allegedly sold nearly 1.4 million Innate shares. Once the information was made public, the stock tumbled by more than 92%. Cameron and the other individual avoided losses of more than $700,000, according to the indictment, which does not allege the congressman himself traded on the information.
“It doesn’t look good aesthetically,” Kirk said. “Looks like he was using a piece of insider information for his own advantage. And that is the very kind of swampy behavior … that we as Trump supporters really kind of reject. And so I’m not totally pleased with his behavior and I’m glad to see that he’s not running for re-election.”