A new report indicates that Senate Intel Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) was not the only member of Congress who dumped a large portion of their stock portfolio before the coronavirus sent the market into a nosedive.
The Daily Beast reports that Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) — who is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and CEO of the business services company Intercontinental Exchange — attended a private briefing about the coronavirus in late January. On that same day, she sold somewhere between $50,001 and $100,000 worth of stock from Resideo Technologies.
The Resideo stock was reported as “jointly owned” between Loeffler and her husband, and the stock price has plummeted since the transaction happened. The Beast goes on to report that Loeffler and Sprecher made over two dozen other stock sales afterwards, plus she has purchased between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock from Citrix, “which has seen a small bump in its stock price since Loeffler bought in as a result of coronavirus-induced market turmoil.”
The report on Loeffler
The reports on Burr and Loeffler both raise questions about whether they can be charged for insider trading. Burr has hit back at NPR for how his words were characterized, but even though Loeffler has yet to issue a public response, here are some tweets from her in recent weeks where she insisted the economy was strong and Democrats were to blame for “dangerously and intentionally” misleading the country.
Loeffler was appointed to her senate seat by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp after her predecessor, Johnny Isakson, retired for health reasons. She will be competing against incumbent congressman Doug Collins (R) for the job in the state’s special election later in the year.
UPDATE – 12:46 a.m. ET: Loeffler has issued a response.
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