Second Republican Senator caught insider trading on coronavirus bad news

| 10:00 pm EDT March 19, 2020
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Earlier this evening it was reported that Republican Senator Richard Burr sold off as much as $1.5 million of his personal stock holdings last month, while publicly claiming that the coronavirus crisis was under control, even as he privately admitted to some constituents that he was expecting a disaster. Now a second Republican Senator has also been caught in similar insider trading circumstances.

Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler received a coronavirus briefing on January 24th and then immediately began selling off millions of dollars in stock market holdings, according to the Daily Beast. This is remarkable considering she was just appointed to her Senate seat on January 6th, by Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp.

What’s even more remarkable is that Loeffler’s husband is the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, and she and her husband held some of this stock jointly, meaning she can’t possibly argue that she didn’t know the STOCK Act of 2012 legally prohibited her from making trades based on inside information she received as a member of Congress. It appears that she and her husband both committed felonies in that regard.

Richard Burr already announced awhile back that he won’t be running for reelection when his current Senate term is up in 2022, so we won’t be shocked if he tries to cut some kind of resignation deal in exchange for immunity. Kelly Loeffler is in a rather different position. Because she was appointed near the end of a term, she has to run for “reelection” this November. After this scandal, you have to wonder if she’ll remain in the race.