Slate: “Sen. Rand Paul disclosed Wednesday that his wife purchased as much as $15,000 in stock in Gilead Sciences, the maker of the antiviral drug known as remdesivir that is used to treat COVID-19. She bought the stock on Feb. 26, 2020, before the World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus a pandemic. That means the disclosure was 16 months late considering that the 2012 Stock Act, meant to combat insider trading in Congress, gives a 45-day deadline to disclose any trades. Paul’s spokesperson says the disclosure was completed in a timely fashion but the senator only realized recently that it had never been sent.
The late disclosure raised more than a few eyebrows in part because it appeared to be part of a pattern in which several senators sold significant numbers of stocks in January and February last year as the true extent of the coronavirus crisis was still unclear. That launched several insider-trading probes, most of which have since ended. Ethics experts said Paul has some explaining to do. “The senator ought to have an explanation for the trade and, more importantly, why it took him almost a year and a half to discover it from his wife,” James D. Cox, a law professor at Duke University told the Washington Post.”