‘The actions are blind to me until they put it in front of me at the end of the reporting period…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The Senate’s newest member, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., sought to defender herself amid recent allegations of insider trading prior to the economic collapse due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Loeffler was one of four senators discovered to have sold off stock in January and early February—after several Senate committees had been briefed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s fears of an outbreak but about a month before the World Health Organization designated it a pandemic.
However, Loeffler said her stock portfolio was managed by a third-party broker without her direct knowledge or input. “The actions are blind to me until they put it in front of me at the end of the reporting period,” she told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto.
Initially, reporting, based on financial disclosures, from left-wing media outlets including ProPublica and NPR indicated that Loeffler had unloaded more than $3 million on the same day as the Senate Health Committee’s CDC briefing.
But she disputed the accusations, saying that the moves were not even sell offs so much as an effort to tap into the then-booming economy with more high-yield investments.
“I will just tell you, in that portfolio, it’s absolutely false that we sold millions,” Loeffler said. “Actually, it was a more bullish bet. We ended up owning companies like Delta, like Goldman Sachs, like Prudential, companies that have been hard-hit and ended up losing money.”
Even if accurate, the figure was eclipsed by the roughly $8 million that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was accused of selling.
Due to their November re-election campaigns, however, Loeffler and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, have faced the lion’s share of criticism, much of it coming from their own conservative base.
Loeffler is facing a challenge on the right from Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., who held a prominent role during President Donald Trump’s recent House impeachment hearings as the GOP counterpart to Rep. Jerrold Nadler on the House Judiciary Committee.
Collins had hoped to secure the seat left vacant last year by retiring GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, but Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp instead tapped Loeffler, a wealthy business executive, in the hopes of shoring up some of the losses in key Republican demographics, including suburban women.
Although a political newcomer, Loeffler said her years of field experience as a financial analyst had made her well-versed in the need to meet ethics requirements.
“I have been around much more substantial material, non-public information than probably any of my peers in the Senate,” she said. “I know exactly how to manage through this.”
She denounced what she saw as unfair and imbalanced reporting after the story broke, the timing of which seemed designed to channel the frustration and outrage that many were feeling over the drastic reversal of fortune wrought by the health crisis.
Loeffler said the scapegoating of her stock trades was misdirected.
“This is fake news,” she said. “It’s preying on the emotions of the American people and trying to create a narrative that’s absolutely false, and no one’s bothered to fact-check it.”
