Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has often made headlines after the coronavirus outbreak. In a recent interview, the Republican appeared to suggest that it wouldn't be worth shutting down the US economy over the risk of a small percentage of people dying in the deadly virus. Now, Johnson has made the headlines once again because of financial reasons.

Johnson is among four Republican senators who allegedly dumped millions of dollars in stocks after receiving classified briefings on the coronavirus outbreak, just before the stock market crashed. Johnson is the fourth GOP senator to have sold stocks before the market crashed, after North Carolina's Richard Burr, Georgia's Kelly Loeffler and veteran senator from Oklahoma, Jim Inhofe.

Burr, who is also the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, dumped over $1M of stock after reassuring people of the officials' response to the coronavirus outbreak. According to ProPublica, Burr dumped between $628,000 and $1.72M of his holdings on February 13 — a significant size of his stocks — in over 30 different transactions.

US Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) (Getty Images)

According to a report in the Daily Beast, Loeffler and her husband sold stock on January 24, the same day the Senate Health Committee got a briefing on the coronavirus from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health.

Inhofe sold stock worth $400,000 on January 27. According to The New York Times, the holdings included PayPal, Apple and Brookfield Asset Management.



On March 2, days before the market crashed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average set its biggest-ever point gain and Johnson was found making massive selling. The politician, whose net worth estimate is over $36M, made a major transaction that day, reported Raw Story. It said though the exact amount is not known, he reportedly sold over $5M that day and potentially up to $25M. The 64-year-old's sale was reportedly in connection to a family business, which is not publicly traded on an exchange.

Playboy columnist Alex Thomas, however, said in a tweet that he had deleted another tweet about Johnson's "stock dump" for he felt the term was not the right description since the senator sold off the share in his family's company.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) (Getty Images)

Johnson's sale was reportedly announced last month.



"A San Francisco-based private equity firm, Gryphon Investors, has made an equity investment in Oshkosh-based Pacur LLC, the supplier of specialty plastic packaging materials to the medical device industry that was led by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson prior to his election to the US Senate in 2010," BizJournals reported. "Details of the transaction were not disclosed."



On March 2, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared nearly 1,300 points or 5 percent as the stocks roared back following a week-long lull hoping the central banks will take action to protect the global economy from the ill-effects of the pandemic that has claimed over 10,000 lives world over.



The gains regained some of the ground lost prior to the rise in a massive sell-off that gave the stocks their worst stretch since the 2008 financial crisis.