Frist continues to deceive on HCA sales

As the AP reports, while Bill Frist continues to stonewall on exactly what he knew about his holdings in HCA, his family's health corporation, documents about the matter show a different picture. Frist is being probed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a large stock sale of HCA on July 1, shortly before the value fell steeply. While the stock was in a blind trust, there are documents available that show Frist's knowledge of how much HCA stock he held. In addition, the executives of HCA (his brother being one of them) sold significant quantities around the same time as Frist's sale. These two facts together suggest a distinct possibility that Frist received a tip to sell his HCA stock from his brother (or another executive), knew he held a lot in his 'blind' trust and ordered that it be sold, only later coming up with the lame reason that he wanted to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. Had his reason been true, he would have sold the stock upon being elected to the Senate and before he could vote on several bills that provided direct benefit to HCA. Conflict of interest? Only in so far as his interest is in making as much money as possible.