Collins, 69, leveraged his notoriety as the first Republican member of Congress to endorse Trump to hold on to his deep-red district in western New York despite a federal indictment. Then, on Monday, after more than a year of insisting on his innocence, he resigned and pleaded guilty to two felony insider trading charges, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to the FBI. His sentencing is scheduled for January and he faces up to five years in federal prison for each count. [...]
Collins criticized national outlets for printing “outright lies” and ripped a page from Trump’s playbook by calling his hometown paper “the fake Buffalo News.” He exploited conservatives’ resentment of the press and went to war with The Buffalo News in his fundraising emails. For those who had watched Collins’ rise in politics, his Trumpian treatment of the press seemed out of character for Collins. Up until the News began to cover Collins’ involvement with Innate, he had a more or less cordial relationship with the paper. [...]
Like Trump, he also never really stepped away from his businesses, despite campaign promises to do otherwise. As he unwound his relationships with several companies before becoming county executive, he remained an unpaid director and lead shareholder of Virionyx, a New Zealand-based biopharmaceutical company now known as Innate. Collins argued that he had stayed on because he had a responsibility to his investors, a cadre of wealthy Buffalonians that included then-Sabres coach Lindy Ruff. [...]
His fiscal conservatism could curdle into a Scrooge-like miserliness. In 2010, he dealt a blow to working mothers when he decreased child care assistance, a cut that would reverberate into the next county executive’s term. As he searched for ways to trim the county budget, he took aim at small theaters, libraries and cultural organizations in the Buffalo area, slashing operational funding in the 2011 budget for all but 10 of the largest cultural groups in the county.
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