Frist accumulated stock in Family Company

[ChairmanAgnostic]

At first, I thought that any investigation of Frist would be non-existent, for a couple of reasons.
First, Frist had a blind trust. Second, he would not willingly violate the terms of the trust and order or communicate with the trust directors as to details or sales. third, he could not be so stupid to avoid the trust rules.

With a valid trust, I could even (maybe) believe him when he said he could vote in the Senate without recusal because of a blind trust. (maybe)

Then it came out that he had a few shares outside the trust. I start getting suspicious.
Then it came out that he broke the trust and communicated with its directors repeatedly and casually, and even told them what to do. That ain't a trust anymore, Mr. Senator.
Then it came out that those few shares outside the trust were a few.

The value of all the transferred shares, calculated on the dates they went into the Senate trusts, was between $775,000 and $1.57 million, according to letters the trustees sent to Frist and the Senate. That stock was on top of millions of dollars in various investments Frist already owned in the Senate blind trusts.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/12/friststock.ap/index.html


Martha Stewart went to prison for losing money, something like $10,000 on an alleged insider's tip.

The value of this out of trust sale, before the crash of his stock is between $775,000 and $1.75 MILLION. Senator, what color prisoner jumpsuit do you prefer, orange? We have something very nice in an orange. It will go with your TV make up.

Frist's future is crisped. Burnt. fried. shattered.

[Igel]

1. The "sale" was transferring shares of stock (at least according

to the article) that could not be in the Senate trust into the Senate trust where they had to be after the shares' status changed. I don't tend to fault people for not doing what they're prohibited from doing, and then coming into compliance when it's possible to do so. OTOH, the article could be wrong, and that's all I'm basing my judgment on.

IMHO, the real question to look at is the date in June when the stock sale from the Senate 'blind' trust occurred, what the amount sold was, and how the information available to the public about HCA differed from the information actually known by Frist.
I've heard that being periodically briefed on the contents of the Senate blind trust was permitted; I'm curious as to whether or not this is actually the case.