After repeatedly dodging questions on the subject, Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler admitted in a statement Thursday that she has turned over documents to federal authorities who are investigating alleged insider trading by her and other members of Congress.
Loeffler’s statement came on the same day that North Carolina Republican Richard Burr stepped down as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after the FBI seized his cell phone.
Burr and Loeffler sold millions worth of stock in January and February after receiving closed-door briefings about the impending COVID-19 crisis.
Politico reports: In a statement released Thursday, the Georgia Republican’s spokesperson said the documents showed that she and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, “acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law.” “The documents and information demonstrated her and her husband’s lack of involvement in their managed accounts, as well the details of those accounts,” the statement said. Earlier Thursday, Loeffler repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether the FBI had contacted her about her stock trades as the agency did for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in relation to her husband’s transactions.
More from the Daily Beast: Loeffler and her husband, New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, unloaded millions in equities in the weeks after that briefing, as U.S. stock markets tanked, even as the two acquired a stake in a popular teleconferencing company whose stock has increased in value since that purchase. The Daily Beast first reported those transactions in March. … Loeffler’s office did not respond to a request to clarify the nature of her interactions with law enforcement officials. She and her husband have vehemently denied any wrongdoing. They insist that all of their stock trades are handled by a third-party investment adviser—though Loeffler has refused to name that adviser—and that their sales of stock this year were not informed or prompted by nonpublic information gleaned through her official duties.
Last month, Loeffler tried to dismiss the insider trading scandal as “a socialist attack.”
