U.S. Representative Christopher Collins, a Republican from New York who was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential run, is pleading guilty in an insider-trading case.
The congressman was charged last year with passing non-public information about Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd., an Australian biotechnology company, to his son. The lawmaker was arrested in August 2018 along with the son, Cameron Collins, and Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron’s fiancee. Prosecutors said the case was the first to bring insider-trading charges against a sitting member of Congress.
Collins, who claimed that seizures of evidence from his staff by law-enforcement authorities had violated his constitutional rights, is scheduled to change his plea to guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, according to court documents. His son and Zarsky are scheduled to plead guilty on Thursday.
James Margolin, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, declined to comment on the planned guilty pleas. Lawyers for the three defendants didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment. Collins’s office declined to comment and referred calls to his attorney.
Collins was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump in the 2016 election. Last week, he took to Twitter to criticize the announcement by House Democrats that they’re pursuing an impeachment investigation of the president, calling it a “witch hunt.”
A judge ruled this month against a request by Collins to review materials he said would show that investigators breached a constitutional provision limiting official inquiries into legislative matters. He’d moved to appeal the ruling, claiming that the evidence seizures violated the Speech or Debate Clause, which protects members of Congress from arrest and prosecution based on their political views.
There are no constitutional provisions or House rules that require a member to forfeit his or her seat after a felony conviction. But Collins, who has already been stripped of his committee assignments, would no longer be able to vote in Congress.
If Collins were to resign his seat, it could help the GOP hold the district in 2020 by removing him as a campaign issue for Democrats. Collins won reelection in 2018, while under indictment, by only 1,000 votes in a heavily Republican district made up of areas surrounding Buffalo and Rochester in western New York.
The three defendants were scheduled to go to trial Feb. 3.
Prosecutors claimed Collins tipped off his son about negative results in a clinical trial for a drug being developed by Innate Immunotherapeutics to treat a form of multiple sclerosis. Collins, one of the company’s largest shareholders, served on the board and had access to non-public information.