Unelected Kelly Loeffler became one of the most corrupt members of Congress the moment she was sworn in last January. With less than 365 days on the job, tonight’s debate highlighted that Loeffler’s time in Washington has been stained by one corrupt scandal after another while Reverend Raphael Warnock has spent his career fighting to protect and expand Georgians’ voting rights.
It’s hard to keep track of all of Kelly Loeffler’s corruption. Here’s five scandals she can’t escape:
-
Broke Ethics Rules
-
Even though Loeffler bought her seat by promising $20 million of her own fortune on re-election, she still blatantly disregarded ethics rules to fundraise from the U.S. Capitol building. This prompted at least three separate ethics complaints against her.
-
-
Dumped Millions in Stocks After Private Coronavirus Senate Briefing
-
On January 24, Loeffler attended a private Senate briefing on the coronavirus. Beginning that same day, she and her husband Jeffrey Sprecher, who chairs the New York Stock Exchange, dumped $3 million in securities and bought over $200,000 of stock before the market crashed due to the pandemic. In late February and early March, Sprecher purchased over $200,000 in DuPont de Nemours stock, a company that made PPE, and sold $18.7 million of stock in Sprecher’s company, Intercontinental Exchange.
-
-
Got Assigned to a Committee Overseeing the Her Husband’s Company Regulators
-
Loeffler faced a “minefield” of potential conflicts of interest in the Senate. Her husband ran the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and was the NYSE chairman. Loeffler was the former CEO of an ICE subsidiary, and the company changed the terms of her compensation to give her a multimillion-dollar golden parachute on her way to the Senate and then got herself assigned to a Senate committee that oversaw the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulated trades made on exchanges run by her husband’s company.
-
-
Helped Big Banks Get Offshore Tax Shelters After the Great Recession
-
Prior to serving in the Senate, Loeffler helped big banks dodge taxes after the Great Recession. She helped her company, Intercontinental Exchange, create and market an entity registered at a Cayman Islands building notorious as the location of offshore tax shelters.
-
-
May Have Used A Trump Tax Loophole To Write Off Her Multimillion-Dollar Campaign Jet
-
Loeffler may have used a Trump tax loophole to write off the multimillion-dollar private jet she bought for campaign travel in late 2019. If Loeffler did write off the cost of the jet, then she let the government eat the cost of a plane that she said she bought to “save taxpayer money.” Loeffler also appeared to omit the holding company for the plane from her required financial disclosures, which would violate Senate ethics rules.
-
“Leave it to a corrupt political mega-donor turned unelected senator for getting involved in more scandals than one can count,” said End Citizens United Spokesperson Ellie Dougherty. “Even a $20 million check can’t hide how blatantly Kelly Loeffler has been looking out for her own bottom line. Raphael Warnock will fight against corruption-stained record’s like Loeffler’s in Washington.”
###