Sen. Kelly Loeffler calls criticism of her stock trades 'a socialist attack' on Fox News

• Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia slammed criticism of her stock trades as "socialist" attacks in a Friday Fox News appearance as she gears up for a tough fight to keep her US Senate seat.
• In March, both Loeffler and her husband came under scrutiny for selling hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock after Loeffler attended a closed-door January 24 briefing on coronavirus before the market's drop.
• "This gets at the very heart of why I came to Washington: to defend free enterprise, to defend capitalism, and this is a socialist attack," Loeffler said of the criticism of the trades.
• In the wake of the accusations that she improperly traded on non-public information, Loeffler and Sprecher said they will liquidate the remaining stock they own, and move to solely trading in mutual funds.
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Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia slammed criticism of her stock trades as "socialist" attacks in a Friday Fox News appearance as she gears up for a tough fight to keep her US Senate seat.

"This is a political attack which is designed to distract from the issue at hand," Loeffler told "America's Newsroom" anchor Sandra Smith.

"We have addressed this and taken extraordinary measures to make sure we can't be attacked for our success. This gets at the very heart of why I came to Washington: to defend free enterprise, to defend capitalism, and this is a socialist attack," adding, "I've been focused solely on working for Georgians."

In March, both Loeffler and her husband Jeff Sprecher, who is also the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, came under scrutiny for selling hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock before the market's drop due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic after Loeffler attended a closed-door January briefing on the virus.

In the wake of the controversy, Loeffler announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that she and Sprecher would liquidate the remaining stock they own, and move to solely trading in mutual funds as opposed to owning individual stocks.

But despite claiming to be attacked by "socialists," Loeffler has faced a fair amount of criticism from fellow conservatives, including GOP Rep. Doug Collins, who is running against her for US Senate this year, and Fox host Tucker Carlson.

The Daily Beast reported last month that after she attended a January 24 closed-door US Senate briefing on the COVID-19 outbreak, Loeffler sold hundreds of thousands of dollars in shares of Resideo Technologies, Comcast, AutoZone, and more before the decline and also bought up shares in Citrix, a company that makes telecommuting software.

In early April, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that further disclosed stock transactions from early March involved the sale of retail stocks, which have seen a sharp decline as the industry suffers from the outbreak. Loeffler sold over $70,000 in shares of the retailer Ross on March 4 and 5; $27,000 in shares of TJX Cos., the parent company of TJ Maxx; and over $56,000 in shares of Lululemon, a popular athleisure clothing brand.

At the same time, she purchased over $87,700 in shares of Dupont, a Delaware chemical company that manufactures medical supplies. Such items are now in high demand as the coronavirus outbreak puts immense strain on America's hospital systems and medical infrastructure, with healthcare workers in desperate need of personal protective equipment.

Loeffler was appointed to the US Senate in December 2019 to fill the seat vacated by former Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned before the expiration of his term.

She now faces a tough fight in a special election in November to serve out the rest of Isakson's term, competing in a jungle election where candidates of all parties run on the same ballot against Collins and two Democrats, prominent Reverend Raphael Warnock and former state Sen. Ed Tarver. If no one candidate wins an outright majority, the top two will advance to a runoff, meaning Loeffler could find herself locked out.

While Loeffler is positioning herself as a Washington outsider, her opponents are hammering her as out-of-touch and self-serving.

"People are losing their jobs, their businesses, their retirements, and even their lives and Kelly Loeffler is profiting off their pain? I'm sickened just thinking about it," Collins tweeted on March 20.

Before she became a senator, Loeffler worked as the chief executive of the cryptocurrency company Bakkt and as an executive at the Intercontinental Exchange, which owns big financial-market companies, including the New York Stock Exchange. She and Sprecher, are estimated to be worth more than $500 million.

Loeffler and her representatives have said that even though their holdings are not in a blind trust, neither she nor her husband had direct control of their portfolios.

In an April 1 statement, a spokesperson for Loeffler told Insider that the stock sell-offs reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution "are consistent with historical portfolio activity and include a balanced mix of buys and sells. Her stock portfolio is managed independently by third-party advisors and she is notified, as indicated on the report, after transactions occur."

The spokesperson added: "Sen. Loeffler continues to operate with integrity and transparency – following both the spirit and the letter of the law. While some will continue to make baseless accusations devoid of facts, Senator Loeffler will continue working to keep Americans safe and provide much-needed relief to Georgia families and businesses impacted by COVID-19."

But the timing of the transactions, coupled with Loeffler seemingly downplaying the threat of the COVID-19, has continued to raise questions as to whether she used her position as a senator and her access to detailed information about the crisis to financially benefit herself by selling off stocks before they plummeted in value.

On February 27, days before the early March transactions, Loeffler tweeted: "FACT: America is doing an incredible job working to keep its citizens safe and healthy in the wake of the #coronavirus outbreak. ALSO FACT: Democrats are intentionally misleading the American public and it's dangerous."

The next day she wrote from her campaign Twitter account: "Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on #Coronavirus readiness." And on March 10, after she sold off all the retail shares, she tweeted that the "the consumer is strong, the economy is strong, & jobs are growing."

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