Former Congressman and Trump’s ally Chris Collins jailed for 26 Months

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A former New York Congressman and Donald Trump ally, Chris Collins was sentenced to at 26 months in prison. He admitted an insider trading scheme and joined at least a dozen of the president’s allies and advisors facing criminal indictments and jail time. The first Republican sitting federal politician to publicly endorse the president pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements in October and resigned from his seat. He was sentenced from the U.S District Court to 26 months. He was arrested in August for sharing information regarding a biotech firm that he received in an email while at a White House picnic in 2017. Collins was also a board member of the company (Australia’s Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd) and owned more than 16% of its shares.

The email showed the company’s only product had failed in clinical trials. The federal prosecutors said he passed the information to his son setting off a chain of insider information trading that led them to dump shares and erode the company’s share value. It is noteworthy that the federal authorities imposed the charges against him and Collins narrowly won his re-election in 2018. The U.S Attorney Geoffrey Berman announced charges against him in a statement and said, “Charges demonstrate again that no matter what the alleged crime, or who allegedly committed it, we stand dedicated to the pursuit of justice, without fear or favor”.

The prosecutors sought a sentence of 57 months earlier this week, arguing that Collins violated the public’s trust when he committed insider trading and when he then committed a second crime to cover it up. The U.S Probation Office also said Collins will only serve a sentence of a year and a day. Collins received his sentence in the U.S District Court in New York, he said, “I violated my core values. I am standing here, probably the last time I will do anything in public. I left Buffalo. I cannot face my constituents”. The congressman joined Trump’s transition team and adopted the president’s aggressive routine. He also called Mitt Romney a “self-serving egomaniac” and blamed Democrats for inflaming partisan rhetoric.