Okay, to just to clarify: your statement that "Loeffler and spouse don't trade their own stocks" is not a statement of verified fact, but is based on your choice to believe Loeffler's public statements. . . .Just repeating to emphasize that "all available information," in this case, are the public statements of people who've been accused. Which doesn't mean they're lies, but they do undercut the weight of the assertion.
Well, there is zero evidence to disprove her statements about how her finances are handled, either. The only evidence we have is her verbal statements and a printed list of trades submitted by her to the Senate Ethics Committee, which states that she was advised of these trades significantly after they were made. (It is her making that assertion). Loeffler has been all over the TV talking about this, and there has been time for someone to come forward and contradict it. There will be more time, and of course it's being investigated, so we shall see.
For my part, given what I know about how the world works, I think it is unlikely in the extreme that the President of the New York Stock Exchange, having put his money into a blind trust so that he could hold that incredibly prominent position, and apparently being extremely wealthy, would risk losing his position, livelihood, prestige, etc. by attempting to instruct the blind trust to make trades and just hoping that fact would never, ever leak out.
And please understand what I'm saying here -- I'm talking about attempting to influence any trades
at all ever, not just those particular trades at this particular time.
So it's not just what they say, but what I understand about how things work. Circumventing the blind trust wouldn't be quite the same as someone logging into their parents' E*Trade account and doing a few trades on their behalf.
It's my understanding that both Senators were privy to a private briefing that emphasized the financial dangers of what was happening, but then spoke with their constituents, downplaying the risk.
I believe it is only Burr who is accused of that, actually. I addressed that topic at length above, but in brief, comparisons are being made between statements of Burr's that fell three weeks apart, as this virus problem was in the process of accelerating, and everyone's perceptions were changing daily.
As to "private briefings," there seems to be this need to assume that "private" somehow implies the imparting of supersecret information known only to the select few. In my opinion it's more likely that it just means a briefing specifically for Senators that summarizes and presents the best information available at the time. There has been a ton of information available to the general public about all of this for some time, coming out daily. I don't think it has been some sort of mystery, or that there was secret information that these people could act on.
Here, for example, is CNN on the 12th of February:
https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-02-12-20-intl-hnk/index.html
45,000 infections worldwide, and 1,100 people dead. That should be enough to give one pause about what is happening . . . Burr sold his shares the next day.