Former OceanGate employee testifies CEO said he would buy a congressman if the Coast Guard blocked Titan expedition | National & World [Video]

(CNN) — Former OceanGate employee Matthew McCoy testified Friday that at a lunch meeting in September 2017, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told him that if he ran into any issues with the US Coast Guard ahead of the Titan expedition, Rush “would buy a congressman” and make the problems “go away.”

McCoy, a former Coast Guard member who was in the US Coast Guard Reserve at the time, brought up safety and regulatory concerns about the expedition at the meeting which Rush said they would get past by going through the Bahamas and launching out of Canada.

“The conversation basically ended when he, after explaining that the Coast Guard had tried to shut him down, down in California, and that he wouldn’t operate there anymore, but that if the Coast Guard became a problem, that he would buy himself a congressman and make it go away,” McCoy said during the final day of the US Coast Guard …