Federal investigators are investigating stock sales made by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who just happened to sell millions of dollars in stock in his family’s healthcare company last June before it fell in price two weeks later.
Frist has been regularly criticized for holding stock in the hospital firm HCA Inc., while directing legislation on Medicare reform and patient issues, but his office argued that his assets were in a blind trust and not under his active control.
Then again, maybe the blind trust is not that blind, according to news reports today:

Frist sold all of his HCA holdings about two weeks before the company issued a disappointing earnings forecast that drove its stock price sharply lower. Frist, who held an undisclosed amount of HCA stock in a blind trust, also asked that his wife and children’s shares be sold. The value of the stock wasn’t disclosed. Earlier this year, Frist reported holding blind trusts valued between $7 million and $35 million. — Businessweek

The Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting the probe into whether Frist had inside knowledge of problems at hospital firm HCA Inc., that led to his sales.
Frist, who is positioning for a possible presidential run in 2008, sold his shares at a time that a number of insiders at the hospital company were also selling off their shares.
His daddy, Thomas Frist, helped co-found HCA in 1968. It is now the biggest hospital chain in the country and Frist, 53, is thought to be the sixth richest among 94 U.S. senators, according to financial disclosure forms released by the Senate in June.