Rep. Chris Collins says he is happy federal prosecutors have dropped some of the charges against him and against his son Cameron in his insider trading case.WBFO's Mike Desmond reports.
A key issue in this criminal case is the U.S. Constitution's "speech and debates" clause. That says a member of Congress can't be challenged for something he says in Congress.
Prosecutors from New York's Southern District U.S. Attorney's Office empaneled a new grand jury and dropped some charges which a judge might have ruled impinged on that constitutional provision.
"Clearly those issues were real enough and concerning enough to the Southern District that they did convene a new grand jury. That's extraordinarily rare," said Collins, making a rare statement Wednesday about the pending case.
In a letter to the trial judge, prosecutors indicated they dropped the charges to avoid excessive delays in resolving the case. The trial is set for February 2020 in Manhattan. Collins was arrested and charged initially in August 2018.
"I've said all along I'm not doing anything to get a plea deal. I intend to go to trial to clear my name," Collins told reporters. "Let's just say the wheels of justice move slowly."
Collins says his lawyers want more information about the new charges and would like to see the case go to trial as scheduled in February but he wants to be ready with all of the needed information.
He is charged with giving advance information to friends and relatives that a pharmaceutical company he and the others had invested in was likely to drop in stock price because a drug from the company had been rejected by regulators.
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