Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Profiting Off Pandemic Pain, Are the Ugly Faces of GOP Corruption

[Zorro]

Washington’s turned a blind eye to their self-dealing and alleged insider trading, but Georgians have not.

By Margaret Carlson

Would you vote for a senator who sold a stock likely to tank after getting a senators-only briefing on a coming pandemic? How about one who told you the pandemic was no big deal while buying shares in a company that sells body bags?

Both Republican incumbents in Georgia’s crucial runoffs, that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate, were investigated this year for allegedly engaging in pandemic-related insider trading.

The two are the Senate’s wealthiest member, Kelly Loeffler, appointed in 2019 and running for a full term of her own, and its seventh wealthiest member, David Perdue, a businessman sued for wage theft and discrimination while losing $150 million in two years as CEO of Dollar General.

After the notorious briefing, Loeffler, who joined Trump in dismissing the pandemic, and her husband, who almost never trades to avoid conflict with his job as chair of the Intercontinental Stock Exchange, made 27 trades worth between $1.2 and $3.1 million that helped them weather the virus-triggered crash. On the same day, Perdue began accumulating $825,000 worth of stock in DuPont, a company that makes personal protective equipment and body bags, and sold an equal amount of other stocks in over a hundred other transactions. He’d already raised eyebrows when as a member of the Senate’s cybersecurity subcommittee, he promoted FireEye, a cybersecurity firm in which he held $250,000 worth of stock, a fraction of his 2,596 trades since joining the Senate. It makes you wonder when he has time to legislate and why Martha Stewart, who prepared the country to bake sourdough bread as a hedge against insanity, will be remembered for going to jail over one trade.

Bill Barr’s Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee, so-called, both ended their investigations into the suspiciously timed trades. The only investigation for insider trading that remains open just happens to be against a senator who’s retired.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kelly-loeffler-and-david-perdue-profiting-off-pandemic-pain-are-the-ugly-faces-of-gop-corruption

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