Recently appointed new girl of the US Senate Kelly Loeffler
is at it again. She is “fessin” up and “coming clean” as we say down South with new disclosures about the massive amount of money she and her aiding and abetting CEO husband have had someone else make trades for them. Yeah, right. If you believe that after reading the article you are dumber than this blond:
Keep this in mind while reading excerpts from the article:
A $1,000 emergency would push many Americans into debt by Annie Nova and Published Wed, Jan 23
Loeffler reports more stock sales amid insider trading allegations
By
Tia Mitchell & Chris Joyner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s most recent financial disclosures show that millions of dollars in stocks were sold on her behalf at the same time Congress was dealing with the impact of the coronavirus.
The largest transactions — and the most politically problematic — involve $18.7 million in sales of Intercontinental Exchange stock in three separate deals dated Feb. 26 and March 11. Loeffler is a former executive with ICE, and her husband, Jeff Sprecher, is the CEO of the company, which owns the New York Stock Exchange among other financial marketplaces.
During the same time period reflected on reports filed late Tuesday, the couple also sold shares in retail stores such as Lululemon and T.J. Maxx and invested in a company that makes COVID-19 protective garments. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution got the first look at these reports, covering mid-February through mid-March and shedding new light on Loeffler’s financial transactions during the pandemic. Previous reports — which have put Loeffler in the national spotlight — covered her trading during the first six weeks of 2020.
Loeffler provided the numbers to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and they were more exact than what would appear on a federal campaign finance disclosure.
The newer stock sales came as the broader markets were diving, and they are likely to fuel allegations that Georgia’s new senator used her insider knowledge about the severity of the pandemic to dump holdings while simultaneously releasing statements about the strength of the American economy and complimenting President Donald Trump on his response. The STOCK Act, a law that went into effect in 2012, makes it illegal for senators to use inside information for financial gain.
Chester Spatt, a professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University, said all these senators could have avoided controversy by declining to buy or sell stocks in individual companies. Spatt, who served as an SEC economist from 2004 through 2007, said senators now must deal with the erosion of public confidence as a result of these transactions.
“This is why senators shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “The burden is on them to demonstrate they were not using insider information.”
Details of individual transactions are less important than the overall perception that senators were making investment decisions at the same time they were receiving private information about the coronavirus pandemic, said attorney Walter Jospin, who for three years served as director of the SEC’s regional office in Atlanta. He said the senators, their spouses and advisers are likely to face questions about whether members shared private information or directed transactions.
Jospin is a donor to Democratic candidates and organizations.
“I have no idea whether these senators violated the federal securities laws,” he said. “I am sure that the SEC will conduct a full and fair investigation. With that said, these trades were, in the context of a worldwide health and economic crisis, certainly unseemly.”
I received an email in response to the previous post from my friend Michael Mulford, a Republican, tonight. If you are wondering how I could possibly have a friend who is a Republican, the answer is that my Mother was a Republican, “God bless her heart”, as we say here down South. When we would talk politics my father would say, “Argue, argue, argue, that’s all you two do.” Mother responded with, “We’re not arguing, Ronald. We are having a heated discussion!”
Michael Mulford
To:Michael Bacon
Sat, Mar 21 at 9:22 PM
“Actually, four Senators are known to have engaged in this behavior, not just these two. One of them has called for an ethics investigation into their actions. One of the four is a Democrat.
I’ve heard that members of Congress are exempt from the insider trading legislation (I don’t know if that is true) and that the holdings are in blind trusts. But I’ve also heard that the husbands do have some measure of control over those trusts.
By any account, this smells and ought to be thoroughly investigated. And if the GOP wants to hold the GA Senate seat, they would do well to nominate someone else.”
Thought I would share the answer with you. Please read the entire article as this is only an excerpt taken from the article:
Update: Several readers have asked about the other senators who sold stock during the same period, including Dianne Feinstein (a California Democrat), James Inhofe (an Oklahoma Republican) and Ron Johnson (a Wisconsin Republican). But none of their trades look particularly suspicious.
Feinstein has said that she did not attend the Jan. 24 briefing; her stock was in a blind trust, which means she didn’t make the decision to sell; and the transaction lost her money, because the trust was selling shares of a biotechnology stock, the value of which has since risen. Inhofe’s transactions were part of a systematic selling of stocks that he started after he became chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Johnson sold stock in his family’s plastic business, as part of a process that has been occurring for months; his sale also occurred well after stock market began falling.
Jeff Blehar of National Review has a helpful summary on Twitter, in which he argues Burr’s transactions are the worst.
Loeffler, who is extremely wealthy and married to the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, frequently sells stock and has said “multiple third-party advisors” — not her or her husband — made the decision to sell shares in January and in February.
(I must interject here to print something the Mulfish must have missed in the previous post:
“Ms. Loeffler, who also sits on the Health Committee, is in a similarly sticky situation. On the very day of the committee’s coronavirus briefing, she began her own stock sell-off, as originally reported by The Daily Beast. Over the next three weeks, she shed between $1,275,000 and $3.1 million worth of stock, much of it jointly owned with her husband, who is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Of Ms. Loeffler’s 29 transactions, 27 were sales. One of her two purchases was of a technology company that provides teleworking software. That stock has appreciated in recent weeks, as so many companies have ordered employees to work from home.”
Only a Republican would believe those trading stocks for the Loeffler’s “just happened” to make trades of this nature without being tipped off. If you do believe the woman then please get in touch with me IMMEDIATELY because I have a great deal for you on some swamp land in Florida.)
The notion that Feinstein or Johnson did something unethical, Belhar wrote, is “flat wrong.” Don Moynihan of Georgetown University agrees.
Burr’s response on Friday morning was not strong. He said that he relied on only “public news reports” about the crisis, like CNBC’s reporting from Asia, a claim that’s impossible to verify. He also said he had asked the Senate Ethics Committee to open “a complete review.”
For more …
Tucker Carlson, Fox News:
[Burr] had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening, but he didn’t warn the public. He didn’t give a prime-time address. He didn’t go on television to sound the alarm. He didn’t even disavow an op-ed he’d written just 10 days before claiming America was ‘better prepared than ever’ for coronavirus. He didn’t do any of those things. Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money, and then he stayed silent. Now maybe there’s an honest explanation for what he did. If there is, he should share it with the rest of us immediately. Otherwise, he must resign from the Senate …
Molly Knight: “Richard Burr should not hold government office by Monday. He needs to resign today.”
David French, The Dispatch: “The potential insider trading is dreadful and possibly criminal, but what could elevate this to a historic scandal is the idea that senators may have known enough to be alarmed for themselves yet still projected rosy scenarios to the public AND failed to make sure we were ready.”
David Frum of The Atlantic wants to know who else may have sold stock: “What did the Trump family sell, and when did they sell it?”
The Times editorial board argued in December that “members of Congress should not be allowed to buy and sell stocks, or to serve on corporate boards.”
In 2012, Robert Reich notes, Burr was one of only a small number of members to vote against a law that barred them for trading on inside information.
Two United States Senators, Richard Burr, from North Carolina, and Kelly Loeffler, from Georgia, both Republicans, have been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Excerpts from an article written by The Editorial Board of the New York Times follow, with a focus on Senator Loeffler. Loeffler was appointed to the seat vacated by Johnny Isakson by the Republican Governor, Brian Kemp. Kemp obtained office by thwarting eligible voters from voting, even when called on to resign his position as Georgia’s Secretary Of State. It is the Secretary of State who controls voting, proving it’s not just who votes, but who counts the vote. (https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/11/02/its-not-just-who-votes-its-who-counts-the-votes/)
In Georgia, as in much of the South, this has just been ‘business as usual’. The woman has no background in government. Her only qualification is MONEY! I cannot help but wonder what it cost the woman to become US Senator? When the COVID-19 virus runs its course this will change because the volcano is rumbling as I write.
Kelly Loeffler should have already resigned the office of US Senator. Since she has not resigned, the woman should resign IMMEDIATELY! Read on and you will understand why…
Did Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler Profit From the Pandemic?
At least two senators engaged in suspiciously timed stock sales. All stock trades by members of Congress should be barred.
By The Editorial Board
March 20, 2020
Crisis often brings out the best in a people. As the coronavirus spreads its devastation, countless Americans are stepping up to perform acts of heroism and compassion, both great and small, to aid their neighbors and their nation.
Then there are certain not-so-inspiring members of the United States Senate.
Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, and Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia, are in the hot seat this week, facing questions about whether they misused their positions to shield their personal finances from the economic fallout of the pandemic, even as they misled the public about the severity of the crisis. According to analyses of their disclosure reports filed with the Senate, the lawmakers each unloaded major stock holdings during the same period they were receiving closed-door briefings about the looming pandemic.
These briefings were occurring when much of the public still had a poor grasp of the virus, in part because President Trump and many Republican officials were still publicly playing down the threat. Instead of raising their voices to prepare Americans for what was to come, Mr. Burr and Ms. Loeffler prioritized their stock portfolios, in a rank betrayal of the public trust — and possibly in violation of the law.
It is unclear precisely what information about the pandemic either Mr. Burr or Ms. Loeffler received in the briefings before their stock sales. But any use of nonpublic information in guiding such dealings would have been not only unethical but almost certainly illegal. Lawmakers and their aides are explicitly barred from using nonpublic information for trades by the STOCK Act of 2012 (the acronym stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge). Mr. Burr of all people should know this, since he was one of only three senators to vote against the bill.
As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Burr is privy to classified information about threats to America’s security. In February, his committee was receiving regular briefings about the coronavirus. He is also a member of the Health Committee, which, on Jan. 24, co-sponsored a private coronavirus briefing by top administration officials for all senators.
Ms. Loeffler, who also sits on the Health Committee, is in a similarly sticky situation. On the very day of the committee’s coronavirus briefing, she began her own stock sell-off, as originally reported by The Daily Beast. Over the next three weeks, she shed between $1,275,000 and $3.1 million worth of stock, much of it jointly owned with her husband, who is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Of Ms. Loeffler’s 29 transactions, 27 were sales. One of her two purchases was of a technology company that provides teleworking software. That stock has appreciated in recent weeks, as so many companies have ordered employees to work from home.
Early Friday, Ms. Loeffler issued a statement asserting that neither she nor her husband is involved in managing her portfolio.
Even as she was shedding shares, Ms. Loeffler was talking down the threat of the coronavirus. “Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on Coronavirus readiness,” she tweeted on Feb. 28, assuring the public that the president and his team “are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe.”
As anxiety spread, she talked up the economy. “Concerned about the #coronavirus?” she tweeted on March 10. “Remember this: The consumer is strong, the economy is strong & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe.”
Faced with calls for his resignation from across the political spectrum, Mr. Burr on Friday issued a statement insisting that his stock sales had been based solely on public information and that he had asked the Senate Ethics Committee to “open a complete review of the matter with full transparency.”
There is pressure for Ms. Loeffler to step down as well, and the recent stock dealings of other senators are now being dissected — as well they should be.
One might have expected lawmakers to be more circumspect about even the appearance of self-dealing after what happened to the Republican Chris Collins, the former congressman from New York, who was sentenced to 26 months in prison earlier this year after pleading guilty to insider trading charges. While at a White House picnic in June 2017, Mr. Collins repeatedly called to alert his son that a small pharmaceutical company in which the family was deeply invested had failed a critical drug trial. Based on the not-yet-public information, Mr. Collins’s son unloaded his holdings in the company, avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
“What I’ve done has marked me for life,” Mr. Collins said tearfully at his sentencing hearing in January.
Apparently, more needs to be done to protect lawmakers from themselves. Last May, two Democratic senators, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, introduced legislation requiring members to place personal investments in a blind trust, or hold off on making any trades, during their time in office. They would also be prohibited from serving on corporate boards.
There may, of course, be perfectly reasonable explanations for what, initially, appears to be illegal — and morally reprehensible — behavior. Mr. Burr and Ms. Loeffler deserve the opportunity to provide those explanations. The Senate should initiate an ethics investigation of all accusations, and, if warranted, refer relevant findings for criminal prosecution
That said, explicit criminality aside, the real scandal here is the way in which these public servants misled an already anxious and confused public. In times of crisis, the American people need leaders who will rise to the occasion, not sink to their own mercenary interests.
Jimmy Carter Calls For Georgia Secretary Of State’s Resignation In Personal Plea
Armchair Warrior 