Somewhere in a self-quarantined compound, Doug Collins must be cracking open a bottle of Dom Pérignon. After the National Republican Senatorial Committee decided to go all-in on backing Brian Kemp’s pick to replace Johnny Isakson’s Senate seat, Sen. Kelly Loeffler may have abused her insider knowledge about the impending coronavirus crisis to sell off her stocks just months into the job.
Also accused is fellow Senate Republican Richard Burr. Both reportedly sold off millions of dollars in the stock market after receiving intelligence briefings about the potential scope of the pandemic. If either had knowledge of or were responsible for their stock sales, their actions constitute a clear violation of the United States STOCK Act, which prevents members of Congress from using privileged information for private gain.
But that’s a big “if,” one that Loeffler has emphatically denied. The Georgia senator said that her stock portfolio is in a blind trust controlled by asset managers. Such a claim is easily falsifiable. If she’s telling the truth, she can release email and legal correspondences proving that neither her nor her husband, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, had any knowledge or influence on her stock portfolio. Given that Loeffler is already a multimillionaire headed into a scorched-earth race against Collins, it’s possible that she’s completely innocent. But after following President Trump’s early talking points of downplaying the coronavirus, she cannot claim “fake news.” She cannot reject scrutiny. She has to pull up the receipts or shut up and resign from public life.
For Burr’s part, his initial response to the story was “lol,” a statement given by spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll to NPR. She then followed up by stating, “Sen. Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak.” But that isn’t exonerating at all. The whole charge is that he got out before the coronavirus fears battered the market because he possessed privileged information.
It’s possible that he has a better defense than that. But then again, a lot of things are possible.
If Burr and Loeffler are able to provide evidence that their stock portfolios are in fact in a blind trust or give another plausible explanation, their only crimes would be acting idiotically enough to keep their assets in individual stocks rather than other markets. But if they can’t, and if they can’t do so soon, they ought to resign — not just from the Senate but permanently from any hopes of public office.
