Kelly Loeffler Rep

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big in dan crensaw arrrr-rrrrr action hero vid w/ org vest and shotguns

SBA TRUMP 2.0 ADMIN

w husb toby big trump fund-raiser donOr?

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AN 8 26

Trump's administrator for the Small Business Administration released a video this week that left folks scratching their heads.

When Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (Georgia) lost her election in 2020 to Rev. Raphael Warnock, she went back to her normal life as a billionaire. After Trump won in 2024, she happily accepted a position in his Cabinet. Less than two years into the post, Loeffler hosted a Q&A for frequently asked questions on the agency's TikTok.

The video depicts Loeffler at the end of a hallway, chatting with a staffer and holding a navy-blue three-ring binder. She turns to walk toward the camera, at times limping. She launches into a story about Trump calling to appoint her and noted he went further, asking her to become a member of his Cabinet, which isn't always guaranteed for the SBA chief.

Loeffler was flooded with mockery for the awkwardness and the prop gaffe.

"The only possible explanation for this video is that Kelly Loeffler's social media staff are all part of the deep state," said Individible co-founder Leah Greenberg.

Cellist and graphic designer Camille MacKenzie wrote, "Is this the first time Kelly Loeffler has ever walked? Why the hell is she so awkward? And why is she doing zero for the small businesses being screwed over by her boss on tariffs? Oh wait, it’s because this admin hates small businesses.

"What the heck is going on with how she is walking?" asked a retired teacher who went viral for uploading the video to Threads.

"Ma'am, your binder is empty," @sbagov wrote.

Songwriter John Carroll posted, "Are we all gonna ignore the fact there’s nothing in the Binder? It is completely empty. She’s just walking around with an empty binder. Why are all of them so creepy? It’s like they’ve been taken over by body snatchers and face snatchers and hair snatchers and snatch snatchers."

"What lunatic carries a binder that way? Even more important, what Cabinet member carries a 3 ring binder? Is she in Cabinet school?" quipped another critic.

"That's not the only thing that is empty," commented one person.

"She's carrying nothing," replied another with a screen capture of the empty binder.

Others noted she seemed to have trouble walking.

"First day in a human body is always the most awkward," said one account.

"If you can't walk in heels without looking like you just got off a horse that you've been riding for 17 hours, don't wear heels," a woman said.

"This looks like more than a problem with the heels. It looks like she’s made of wood and is pretending to be a real boy," a friend replied.

Those on TikTok went straight to Loeffler's history: "She is a billionaire and her husband was a NYSE CEO who, as a U.S. senator, bought video conferencing tech stock (Citrix) on January 24, 2020, immediately after leaving a private Senate briefing on what COVID may do as it was spreading."

A marketing consultant quipped, "I wouldn’t trust this woman to water a plant, let alone run the SBA."

Others were slightly more empathetic, "1) She is very tall. 2) She is in very high, very skinny heels. 3) She is bad and unnatural on camera. 4) She is of an age where her joints may be wearing out. 5) She is a terrible person who doesn’t know how to be normal."

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The Guardian reports the Friday National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. hosted a wide variety of far-right religious extremists, from men-only secret societies to theocratic right-wing pundits and associations.

Other event speakers were closely associated with the secretive Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an invitation-only, Christian ultra-nationalist network with “undercurrents of neo-fascist accelerationism,” according to a Middlebury Institute report.

Mingling and mixing among the theocrats, however, were Trump officials.

“NatCon is filled with extremists touting white nationalism and conspiracy theories,” said Heidi Beirich, the chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “What is notable is how Trump administration officials and allies are key players in the event, showing that it is near impossible today to distinguish the far right from the administration.”

IFrame Content

One speech by White house “border czar” Tom Homan contained warnings for the city of Chicago, which Trump is threatening to douse with federal agents and national guard troops, as he already has in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

“I said two months ago, we’re going to flood the zone and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Homan told the crowd. “In Chicago, it’s coming. So, watch what happens in the very near future.”

The Guardian reports Trump’s deputy attorney general, Harmeet Dhillon, gave her own speech in which she characterized the justice department’s civil rights division as “the president’s shock troops.”

“We’re the front guard. We are going to go first and clear the way for others to do their work,” said Dhillon, who has assigned civil rights lawyers to investigate anti-genocide campus protests and perceived “anti-Christian bias.”

Other administration figures speaking at NatCon included Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and Small Business Administration leader and former senator, Kelly Loeffler.

These Trump officials shared screen time with leading figures of the so-called “new right,” an anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist far-right movement “whose reactionary views have undergirded the Trump administration’s actions,” according to the Guardian. They also shared space with Society for American Civic Renewal Co-founder Charles Haywood — a regular engagement farmer on X — who recently posted: “Has a single (subcontinent) Indian ever accomplished anything of truly major note in the modern period?”

The Guardian reports the conference also featured “prominent faces from the universe of thinktanks surrounding the Trump administration who have signed on to, or even devised the Project 2025 agenda that has provided a blueprint for Trump’s actions in its first months.” This included Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, whose speech “leaned into male grievance and anti-immigrant sentiment,” according to the Guardian.

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

GGL AI INAUG 8 25

Individuals and CEOs

Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO): $1 million (personal donation)
Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder): Attended inauguration and his company donated $1 million
Mark Zuckerberg (Meta CEO): Attended inauguration and his company donated $1 million
Elon Musk: Close adviser to Trump and attended the inauguration
Tim Cook (Apple CEO): $1 million (personal donation)
Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO): $1 million (personal donation)
Warren Stephens: $4 million (nominated Ambassador to the United Kingdom)
Jared Isaacman: $2 million (nominated NASA administrator)
Melissa Argyros: $2 million (nominated Ambassador to Latvia)
Dan Newlin: $1 million
Jeffrey Sprecher: $1 million (husband of Trump's Small Business Administrator appointee, Kelly Loeffler)
Keith Rabois: $1 million
Ken Howery: $1 million
Ken Griffin: $1 million
Miriam Adelson: $1 million
Scott Bessent: $250,000 (nominated Treasury Secretary)
Tilman Fertitta: $1 million (nominated Ambassador to Italy)
Linda McMahon: $1 million (nominated Education Secretary)
Howard Lutnick: Cantor Fitzgerald (his former employer) gave $1,047,000
Jeffery Hildebrand: $500K (husband of Trump's Ambassador to Costa Rica nominee)

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an 6 25

A controversial flag associated with far-right causes was recently seen prominently displayed on a federal building, according to a new report.

In a Tuesday article, WIRED reported that the "Appeal to Heaven" flag was seen displayed on the flagpole of the Small Business Administration (SBA) earlier this week, just below the American flag. That flag — which depicts an evergreen tree with the text "An Appeal to Heaven" – was seen at the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and was also flown outside the vacation home of Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito in 2024.

SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler, who was a former Republican U.S. senator from Georgia who ultimately lost her seat to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in 2021, posted a photo of the flag flying above the SBA building on her official X account last week.

"Today at SBA’s Flag Day Ceremony, we proudly raised a new AMERICAN MADE flag over our headquarters in Washington," she tweeted. "It is a privilege to serve under its Stars and Stripes - on behalf of the 34 million small businesses who represent the best of America."

IFrame Content

Multiple SBA staffers anonymously confided to WIRED that they were personally caught off guard by the flag's display, and argued that the flying of a far-right political symbol above their building gives the false impression that the workers inside subscribe to the beliefs associated with it.

“It was pretty jarring to walk out of work and see that flag on the building, and it’s frustrating because it makes it seem like the agency as a whole supports what it has come to stand for, when that’s just not true,” one staffer said. “We’re proud to do work that supports, or at least is supposed to support, all Americans. The decision to raise that flag isn’t one that reflects the views of everyone at SBA.”

"That the Appeal to Heaven flag is being flown on a government building alongside the American flag should be shocking to anyone who doesn't wish to live in a theocracy,” George Washington University extremism researcher Jon Lewis told WIRED. “The contemporary usage of the Appeal to Heaven flag is synonymous with Christian nationalism, full stop."

Click here to read WIRED's full report (subscription required).

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6 25 no talk exept addy?

Kelly Loeffler - Wikipedia

Kelly Lynn Loeffler (/ˈlɛflər/ LEF-lər; born November 27, 1970) is an American businesswoman and politician who has served as the 28th administrator of the Small Business Administration since February 20, 2025. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as a United States senator from Georgia from 2020 to 2021.

Loeffler was chief executive officer (CEO) of Bakkt, a subsidiary of commodity and financial service provider Intercontinental Exchange, of which her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is CEO. She is a former co-owner of the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).^[1] Loeffler is a member of the Republican Party.

Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, appointed Loeffler to the U.S. Senate in December 2019 after Senator Johnny Isakson resigned for health reasons. Loeffler ran in the 2020 Georgia U.S. Senate special election, seeking to hold the seat until January 2023. She finished second in the November 3 election, advancing to a runoff with Democrat Raphael Warnock held on January 5, 2021, where she lost.^[2] That same day, her fellow Georgia senator David Perdue also lost his bid for re-election. When Perdue's term ended on January 3, 2021, Loeffler ascended to be the senior senator from Georgia, a position she held for just under three weeks until Warnock was sworn in.

Loeffler aligned with President Donald Trump in her time in the Senate, touting a "100 percent Trump voting record" during her campaigns.^[3][4] After the November 2020 election, Loeffler and Perdue claimed without evidence that there had been unspecified failures in the 2020 U.S. presidential election,[failed ^verification] and called for the resignation of Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who rejected the accusations. She later supported a lawsuit by Trump allies seeking to overturn the election results,^[5] and also announced her intention to object to the certification of the Electoral College results in Congress.^[6] After the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Loeffler announced that she would withdraw her objection to the certification of the electoral votes and later voted to certify.

Loeffler was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to co-chair the inaugural committee for his second presidency, along with Steve Witkoff. She was also chosen as President Trump's nominee to lead the Small Business Administration.

Early life and education

Loeffler was born in Bloomington, Illinois, to Don and Lynda (née Munsell) Loeffler, and raised on her family's corn and soybean farm in Stanford, Illinois.^[7][8] She has a brother, Brian.^[9] In 1988, she graduated from Olympia High School in Stanford, where she was in the marching band, ran cross-country and track, and played varsity basketball.^[10]

In 1992, Loeffler graduated with a Bachelor of Science in marketing from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's Gies College of Business, where she was a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority.^[11] After college, she worked for Toyota as a district account manager.^[12][13] In 1999, Loeffler graduated with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in international finance and marketing from DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business.^[8][11] She financed her graduate school tuition by mortgaging land inherited from her grandparents.^[8]

Early career

After earning her MBA, Loeffler worked for Citibank, William Blair & Company, and the Crossroads Group.^[14] In 2002, she joined Intercontinental Exchange, a commodity and financial service provider, in investor relations.^[15] She married the firm's CEO, Jeffrey Sprecher, in 2004.^[8][16] Loeffler was eventually promoted to senior vice president of investor relations and corporate communications.^[17] In 2018, she became the chief executive officer (CEO) of Bakkt, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange.^[18]

In 2010, Loeffler bought a minority stake in the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).^[8] In 2011, she and Mary Brock bought the team from Kathy Betty.^[17][19] Loeffler took an active role in the team, arranging her travel schedule to attend all games and often meeting with head coach Michael Cooper during halftime to analyze the first half of the game.^[20] Due in part to her stance on the Black Lives Matter movement, and the resulting criticism expressed by many players on the Dream roster and within the league, in February 2021 Loeffler sold her stake in the team.^[21]

When Loeffler left Intercontinental Exchange to join the Senate, the company awarded her over $9 million of financial assets. A spokesperson for Loeffler said Loeffler "left millions in equity compensation behind" by joining the Senate.^[22]

Political donations

According to OpenSecrets, as of December 2019, Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, had donated $3.2 million to political committees. Ninety-seven percent of these donations went to Republicans, and three percent to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Debbie Stabenow,^[23] and Georgia congressman David Scott (GA–13), who received $10,200.^[23][24] Loeffler donated $750,000 to Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting former governor Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.^[7] The National Republican Senatorial Committee received $247,500 from Loeffler and Sprecher.^[24] In May 2020, Loeffler's husband gave $1 million to a Trump 2020 reelection super PAC, his largest federal political donation to date.^[25][26]

United States senator from Georgia (2020–2021)

Appointment

:{Loeffler meeting with Mitch McConnell in December 2019[:

Loeffler considered seeking the Republican nomination in the 2014 United States Senate election in Georgia but ultimately passed on the race because of Intercontinental Exchange's pending acquisition of the New York Stock Exchange.^[27]

On August 28, 2019, sitting Georgia senator Johnny Isakson announced that he would resign at the end of the year, citing health reasons.^[28] On December 4, 2019, in accordance with Georgia law, Governor Kemp appointed Loeffler to fill Isakson's unexpired term until the next regularly scheduled statewide election in November 2020.^[29] Kemp traveled to Washington to explain why he wanted to appoint Loeffler instead of Trump's choice, Representative Doug Collins, who helped lead the House opposition to Trump's impeachment. The choice of Loeffler angered many Georgia conservatives who had supported Collins.^{[7][30][31][32}]

On January 6, 2020, Loeffler was sworn in to the Senate.^[33] She became the second female to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate. The first was Rebecca Latimer Felton, also the first female U.S. senator, who served a symbolic one-day term in 1922.^[34] The appointment was valid until the runoff election scheduled for January 5, 2021, because no candidate in the November 2020 election received a majority of the vote.^[2]

Tenure and political positions

Loeffler called herself the most conservative Republican in the Senate^[35][36] and allied herself with President Trump.^[35][37] During her tenure in the Senate, Loeffler sponsored 57 bills and cosponsored 210.^[38] She voted in line with President Trump's stated position 80% of the time.^[39][3]

Loeffler supported Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.^[40] Loeffler opposed abortion and supported anti-abortion legislation.^[41][42][43] The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List initially opposed Loeffler's appointment, but endorsed her in the 2020 election.^[44][45][42] Loeffler donated portions of her Senate salary to anti-abortion pregnancy centers and an anti-LGBTQ adoption agency.^[46]

On gun issues, Loeffler received "A" ratings from the NRA Political Victory Fund^[47] and Gun Owners of America.^[48] She cosponsored the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act and opposed the assault weapons ban and red flag law proposals. Loeffler supported constructing a border wall along the Mexico–United States border,^[49] and the appointment of conservative judges to federal courts.^[50] In September 2020, she introduced legislation to the Senate floor that would bar transgender women from participating in girls' and women's sports.^[51] The bill stated "sex shall be recognized based solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth".^[52]

In February 2020, Loeffler said that "Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on #Coronavirus readiness".^[53] She went on to say that regarding COVID-19, "Americans are in good hands with" the Trump administration.^[53] In March 2020, Loeffler said that the U.S. was "in the best economic position" to handle COVID-19.^[53] She criticized Democrats, writing that they "continue to play politics with" COVID-19.^[53]

In October 2020, shortly after Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were diagnosed with COVID-19 after attending events where they closely interacted with other individuals while maskless, Loeffler, who often appeared at rallies and gatherings without wearing a mask,^[54] blamed their contraction of the disease on the People's Republic of China, tweeting, "China gave this virus to our President @realDonaldTrump and First Lady @FLOTUS. WE MUST HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE."^[55]

During the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count in January 2021, Loeffler was slated to vote against the measure, but after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, which Loeffler witnessed, she changed her mind, saying, "The events that transpired have forced me to reconsider. I cannot now in good conscience object to the certification of the votes."^[56]

Committees

COVID-19 insider trading investigation

Main article: 2020 congressional insider trading scandal

On March 19, 2020, the release of federal financial disclosure documents showed that Loeffler and her husband Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman and CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange (a corporation that owns the New York Stock Exchange), had sold stock in companies vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic with an aggregate value of several million dollars. They began selling stocks on January 24, the same day Loeffler attended a private briefing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on the spread of the disease, before the public had been alerted to its severity.^[57] Loeffler denied any wrongdoing, saying the trades were made by a third-party advisor and that she learned about them only after they occurred.^[58] Between January 24 and February 14, the couple sold between $1.275 and $3.1 million worth of stock in 27 companies, while buying stocks worth between $450,000 and $1 million, including in Citrix, which develops remote collaboration software.^[59][60]

The government watchdog group Common Cause filed complaints with the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee, alleging possible violations of the STOCK Act and insider trading laws in the matter of stock sales by Loeffler and three other senators, Richard Burr, Jim Inhofe, and Dianne Feinstein.^[61] Loeffler and Sprecher had sold at least $18.7 million in Intercontinental Exchange stock before the 2020 stock market crash.^[62] After being criticized for the trades, Loeffler and Sprecher sold their individual stocks in an effort "to move beyond the distraction" caused by trades they made before and during the market decline caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.^[63] On May 26, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had closed its inquiry into Loeffler.^[64] On June 16, 2020, the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed Common Cause's complaint, writing to Loeffler, "Based on all the information before it, the Committee did not find evidence that your actions violated federal law, Senate Rules or standards of conduct."^[65]

Loeffler in 2020

2020–2021 U.S. Senate special election

Main article: 2020–2021 United States Senate special election in Georgia

Loeffler ran to serve the remaining two years of the Senate term to which she had been appointed. She planned to spend $20 million of her own money on her campaign.^[66] Under Georgia's election law, all candidates for the seat (regardless of political party) compete in a nonpartisan blanket primary;^[67] in addition to Democratic candidates, Loeffler, backed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was challenged by fellow Republican Doug Collins, who represented Georgia's 9th congressional district.^[68]

In July 2020, Loeffler, who co-owned the Atlanta Dream, wrote the WNBA a public letter objecting to players wearing shirts with "Black Lives Matter" and "Say Her Name" printed on them, and suggesting they wear American flags instead.^[69][70][71] She stated her opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it "advocates things like defunding and abolishing the police, abolishing our military, emptying our prisons, destroying the nuclear family" and "promotes violence and antisemitism".^[72][71] Her comments led some WNBA players to call for her removal from ownership.^[73] Loeffler later said that the movement was "based on Marxist principles" and threatens to "destroy" America.^[74] In August 2020, players from the Dream and several other teams wore "Vote Warnock" T-shirts in support of one of Loeffler's Democratic challengers in the special election.^[75][76]

During her 2020 campaign, Loeffler said that she had never disagreed with Trump. When she was asked about the Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump discusses groping women, Loeffler replied that she was "not familiar with that".^[77] When she was separately asked about a recording of Trump telling Bob Woodward that he was intentionally downplaying COVID-19 in public, she responded that it was "fake news".^[78]

During the 2020 campaign, Loeffler touted that she had been endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a controversial Republican ^[citation ^needed] who won the election for Georgia's 14th congressional district. Greene had a history ^[citation ^needed] of promotion of the QAnon conspiracy theory and of commentary that has been considered racist.^[79][80][81] Asked whether she accepted Greene's endorsement given Greene's history of remarks, Loeffler said she knew nothing about QAnon and criticized the media for misrepresenting or faking events.^[78]

:{As no candidate received over 50% of the vote in the election, Loeffler, who came in second, participated in a runoff election on January 5, 2021, against the primary's first-place finisher, Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.^[2][82][83] The other senate race from the state between David Perdue and Jon Ossoff also went to a runoff. This meant if Democrats won both seats, which they ultimately did, they would take control of the senate in a 50–50 tie, because Vice President Kamala Harris had the tie breaking vote. After the November election, Loeffler and the other U.S. senator from Georgia, David Perdue, claimed without evidence that there had been "failures" in the election, and called for the resignation of the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican.

Their rhetoric fed into falsehoods and conspiracy theories among segments of the right, including Trump, who lost the presidential election to Joe Biden.^[83][84][82] There was no evidence of wrongdoing in connection with the election.^[83] Raffensperger rejected the calls for his resignation.^[82] According to Politico, Loeffler repeated Trump's baseless claims of fraud because she wanted the support of Trump and his core voters in the January runoff.^[85] In December 2020, Loeffler supported a lawsuit by Trump allies seeking to overturn the election results.^[5]}:

On November 20, 2020, Loeffler spoke without a mask at a rally in Canton, Georgia, 46 days before the runoff. Later that day, she tested positive for COVID-19; the result of a subsequent test the following day was inconclusive. She had intermittently worn a mask while campaigning.^[54] Attendees at her rallies were mostly maskless.^[86] As a consequence of the initial positive test result, Loeffler canceled future appearances at rallies, entering quarantine for the recommended time period.^[54] On January 1, 2021, Loeffler absented herself from the successful override of Trump's veto of the defense spending bill.^[87]

Throughout the campaign she sought to win the support of pro-Trump voters.^[88] She touted her endorsement from Trump; he held a rally in the state shortly before the election.^[89] At the rally, he asked his supporters to vote for Loeffler, also repeating debunked voter fraud allegations. Her campaign tried to paint her opponent Raphael Warnock as a socialist in a series of campaign ads, calling for people to vote for her to "hold the line" against what she called socialism. In a December 6, 2020, debate she repeatedly accused her opponent of being a "radical liberal" and refused to admit Joe Biden was the winner of the 2020 United States presidential election.^[90] With Democrats in the race calling for $2,000 COVID-19 stimulus payments if they won and Donald Trump backing the policy, she announced she would back the payments.^[91]

The Associated Press called the race for Warnock in the early morning hours of January 6.^[92] His win was attributed to a large black voter turnout in the runoff.^[92] That same day, Loeffler planned to object to the certification of the presidential election results, but after the storming of the United States Capitol, she withdrew her objection and accepted the results. The next day, Loeffler conceded to Warnock.^[93]

Post-senatorial career (2021–2025)

Following the special election, Loeffler founded Greater Georgia, an organization that planned to register likely conservative voters in Georgia, expand conservative messaging infrastructure, and advocate for changes to voting laws to increase election security.^[94] Loeffler personally invested at least $1 million in the organization.^[95]

In July 2023, Loeffler joined the board of directors of PublicSquare, an online marketplace marketed towards conservatives.^[96]

During the 2024 United States presidential election, Loeffler was a top donor to Donald Trump, having contributed more than $4.9 million to his re-election effort.^[97]

Administrator of the Small Business Administration (2025–present)

Nomination and confirmation

On December 5, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced Loeffler as his nominee for Administrator of the Small Business Administration.^[98]

She appeared before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on January 29, 2025.^[99] The committee advanced her nomination in a 12–7 vote on February 5.^[100] On February 19, the Senate confirmed her nomination in a 52–46 vote.^[101]

Tenure

Loeffler was sworn in as the 28th Administrator of the Small Business Administration on February 20, 2025.

Personal life

Loeffler is a Roman Catholic.^[42]

In 2004, Loeffler married Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange and chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.^[15] They live in Tuxedo Park, Atlanta,^[102] in a $10.5 million, 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m²) estate, bought in 2013 in what was then the most expensive residential real estate transaction ever recorded in Atlanta.^[13] They have four additional homes and a condo.^[103] In November 2020, Newsweek reported Loeffler's and Sprecher's combined net worth at $800 million, making her the wealthiest sitting U.S. senator at the time.^[104][20]

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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/**2021/02**/biden-climate-change-actions-anger-big-oil/

President Joe Biden signed executive actions last week prioritizing solutions to the “existential threat” of climate change, drawing the ire of many key players in the politically powerful oil and gas industry.

Biden’s actions pressed pause on the leasing of federal lands and waters for oil drilling, set a goal of keeping 30 percent of federal lands for conservation purposes and announced the electrification of the federal government’s fleet of vehicles.The move comes a week after Biden revoked the permits for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline just hours after his inauguration, following through on a campaign-trail promise.

Leading up to the 2020 election, the oil and gas industry contributed around $1.6 million more to former President Donald Trump than to Biden. Trump painted himself as an ally to the industry on the stump and throughout his presidency — though industry insiders told Politico in 2020 that the Trump administration was “a mixed bag” and “more like ‘meh’” than the windfall they had hoped for in 2016.

The oil industry spent millions in 2020 to try to keep a GOP majority in the Senate. Valero, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, among the few corporations that give to super PACs, gave at least $1 million each this election cycle to the Senate Leadership Fund, a conservative super PAC that spent $271 million to campaign against Democrats vying for the Senate.

Pausing land and water leases ‘to the extent possible’

Biden’s decision to halt future leases of federal land, pending a comprehensive review of the climate impact, caused an uproar among oil and gas companies and trade associations. Just hours after Biden formalized the order, the Western Energy Alliance announced it would sue the Biden administration, alleging the move violates existing law.

Most drilling occurs on private land, rather than federal property. In 2017, approximately 24 percent of oil and 13 percent of natural gas extracted in the United States came from federal lands. According to analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey, around a quarter of U.S. emissions come from the combustion and extraction of resources from federal lands.

Oil and gas companies rushed to stockpile drilling permits during Trump’s lameduck period — doubling the number of permit requests over the same period in 2019, according to an AP report.Under Biden’s order, oil and gas companies can continue to obtain new permits to drill on land that has already been leased.

Experts say the executive action likely won’t immediately impact rates of oil extraction in the U.S. As of 2019, there were 38,294 leases active across the country, concentrated mostly in the American West. Once a lease has been issued, companies have 10 years to begin production on the land before the lease terminates.

The oil and gas industry’s leading trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, came out against the order. API President Mike Sommers criticized Biden’s suspension of federal agencies’ authority to issue leases of federal land to drilling companies in a Jan. 21 statement.

“Restricting development on federal lands and waters is nothing more than an ‘import more oil’ policy. Energy demand will continue to rise—especially as the economy recovers—and we can choose to produce that energy here in the United States or rely on foreign countries hostile to American interests,” Sommers said.

In 2020, API’s PAC spent $88,200 to support Republican candidates, giving $5,000 to the Great America PAC, a Trump-aligned Carey committee. API also dropped $5.3 million to employ 40 lobbyists, reporting lobbying 66 individual bills. The institute’s lobbying spending fell during Trump’s administration after trending upward throughout former President Barack Obama’s two terms in office.

Another leading oil and gas industry association, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, has also come out in opposition to the action.

“We think it was really misguided,” Senior Vice President for Government Relations Dan Naatz told an Arkansas TV news team. “It impacts jobs and economies through the inner-Mountain West, all the way through the country.”

In 2020, the organization’s PAC spent $215,300 in campaign contributions, giving $10,000 each to Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and former Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.).

Biden framed the executive action as a jobs package,remarking, “today is climate day in the White House which means today is jobs day at the White House,” just before he signed the executive actions. Labor leaders say they are waiting to hear how exactly Biden will replace jobs lost in energy sectors.

“It’s too glib and easy to say someone working in the mines can get a solar job. That is too simplistic,” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, told the Washington Examiner. “There is a mismatch between where energy jobs are getting lost and where they are created. We have to close that gap, but we also have to be real and help economies diversify their economies in ways based on their own assets.”

Oil corporations emphasize that gap. The Global Energy Institute, a subsidiary of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, came out against some of Biden’s climate actions, claiming it would lead to widespread unemployment.

“Without the prospect of future leases, investment and planning will begin to dry up immediately, thwarting job creation and the economic growth at the worst possible time,” the Institute’s President Marty Durbin said in a statement.

The Chamber of Commerce perennially favors Republicans anddropped $5.7 million in outside spending in 2020.

Keystone canceled, frustrating some oil companies

The Chamber of Commerce also condemned Biden’s action to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, a project widely opposed by environmental advocates, indigenous communities and scientists.

“This is a politically motivated decision that is not grounded in science. It will harm consumers and put thousands of Americans in the building trades out of work,” Durbin said.

The Keystone XL pipeline was proposed in 2008, vetoed by Obama in 2015 and promptly re-initiated by Trump in 2016 along with another controversial project, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Environmental and indigenous rights advocates are now calling on Biden to cancel the latter pipeline, which abuts the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

That pipeline is owned by Energy Transfer Partners, an oil and gas conglomerate that gave more in campaign contributions than any other company in the industry. Ninety-nine percent of its donations went to Republican candidates and committees. In 2020, the company’s co-founder and board chair, Kelcy Warren, donated a whopping $10 million to America First Action, a Trump-affiliated super PAC.

Biden’s climate actions are also drawing criticism from Republican lawmakers from oil-rich states who have benefited from industry contributions. Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), John Barrasso(R-Wyo.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) announced Jan. 22 that they wouldintroduce legislation to overturn Biden’s executive action and re-issue permits to the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was slated to pass through Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska before connecting to an existing pipeline in Kansas.

“We came so far during the last administration – from prioritizing American energy development to ending the far-left’s war on fossil fuels,” said Inhofe in a statement announcing the legislation.

Throughout his career, Inhofe has received in excess of $2.2 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies. Daines and Barrasso have each received $1.2 million from the industry.

The group’s bill is a symbolic gesture to the industry and its supporters without any real hope of passing the Senate, where Democrats wield a majority, albeit narrowly. The oil and gas industry spent heavily to prevent the upper chamber from swinging blue, giving around $600,000 each to Republican Senate candidates in Georgia Kelly Loefflerand David Perdue, who both lost narrowly to Democratic challengers in January runoffs. The American Petroleum Institute donated $5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund in late November, after every Senate campaign had concluded save the two ultra-expensive Georgia races.

Faced with pressure from Washington, other corporations look to adapt

Some energy companies are taking a different tact, announcing plans to adapt their business model to thrive in a Biden administration that prioritizes conservation and climate action.

Industry giant Exxon Mobil announced Feb. 1, just days after Biden’s executive order, that it would initiate massive investments in carbon capture technology aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The company, whose employees favored Biden over Trump in 2020 campaign contributions, will spend $3 billion over the next five years to build up a new subsidiary business: ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.

General Motors has committed to only manufacturing zero-emissions vehicles by the year 2035, inline with Biden’s commitment to electrifying the government’s fleet. Ford’s new CEO has also pledged to restructure production plans, prioritizing the addition of electric vehicles to its portfolio, which currently features only one fully-electric model.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil-refining trade association that spent $3.2 to lobby the government in 2019, responded to that provision by reaching out to an unlikely ally: biofuel manufacturers. AFPM reportedly hopes to create an alliance with the competitor industry to lobby Biden to revise his fleet electrification plans in order to include cars powered by low-emission gasoline made from a mix of gasoline and ethanol.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/brad-raffensperger/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/kelly-loeffler-net-worth/

last min $ to own camp

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/kelly-loeffler-2649643019/

donor hire scam?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/loeffler-2649526867

roger salon

on Oct. 9, billionaire Ken Griffin, the head of amultinational financial services company, gave $2 million to a super PAC called Georgia United Victory (GUV), which had originally been launched by allies of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp but at the time exclusively supported Sen. Kelly Loeffler's election campaign.

Griffin ranks among the richest people in America, and during the 2020 election cycle he spent at least $57 million to support conservative candidates, most of that on Republicans in tight U.S. Senate campaigns. He donated significant sums to support Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona and Michigan GOP candidate John James, among others. But his $2 million to GUV on Oct. 9 was one of his 10 largest contributions ever, and he had already given the Loeffler-centric PAC $1 million about five weeks earlier.

Most major Republican donors at that time were avoiding Loeffler's race, a nonpartisan "jungle primary" in which she faced not just Democrats like the Rev. Raphael Warnock — her current opponent in the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff election — but also Rep. Doug Collins, a conservative Republican closely allied with President Trump.

Furthermore, there was no indication that Loeffler needed the money. She is the richest member of Congress, with an estimated net worth of $800 million. After Kemp appointed her to the Senate last January to fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, she had promised to spend as much as $20 million funding her own campaign. She consistently told voters that her independent wealth conferred an advantage: She would not be bought by corporate interests.

Griffin's donation to GUV on Oct. 9 also came one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that one of his companies,Citadel Securities— a separate entity from the Citadel hedge fund, which Griffin also runs — had reached an initial agreement to buy one of its competitors, a company called IMC, for a price "in the tens of millions of dollars."

Citadel Securities is one of the world's leading "market makers" — meaning a company that quotes both a buy and a sell price for a trade, hoping to make a profit on the spread — and the proposed acquisition would make Citadel Securities the largest designated market maker, or DMM, on the New York Stock Exchange, with domain over trades for more than half of all securities listed on the exchange.

But before that could happen, management at the world's most famous stock exchange — a central institution in American capitalism since its founding in 1792 — had to approve the deal. That followed in due course, and according to a Citadel Securities press release, the acquisition of IMC was finalized on Nov. 18.

As it happens, Kelly Loeffler's husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange — as well as founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the company that has owned the exchange since acquiring it in a $10.9 billion deal in 2013. Loeffler herself sits on a Senate committee that oversees Wall Street and the financial markets.

To be clear, there is no evidence of any illegality surrounding Griffin's contributions to the Loeffler super PAC. As for the Citadel Securities/IMC deal, a spokesperson for ICE, Sprecher's company, told Salon by email that NYSE approval "was a straightforward, staff-driven process that had zero involvement from Jeff."

After considerable discussion off the record, Zia Ahmed, a spokesperson for Griffin, issued a statement placing Griffin's donations to Loeffler in the larger context of his political giving in 2020:

Ken supported several diverse and talented Republican candidates in highly-contested races for Senate this year, including Sens. Collins, [Joni] Ernst and McSally, as well as John James. Sen. Loeffler is a successful businesswoman and an exceptionally strong member of the Senate, and Ken supported both Sen. Loeffler and Sen. [David] Perdue in the general and runoff elections.

Still, the circumstances and timing of the Loeffler donations remain distinctive, and serve to illustrate the haze of money, power and influence that surround the newly-minted Georgia senator, who walked away from an immensely lucrative career as a top executive within her husband's firm when she entered politics a little less than a year ago. Given Loeffler's connections, as well as the government oversight she now exercises over those connections, almost every contact she has with her husband's industry reverberates with potential conflicts of interest.

At the time of Griffin's donations, this had been made clear in months of reporting about Loeffler's wealth and corporate ties, as well as the widespread scrutiny she drew, along with several other senators, for a number of well-timed stock trades ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.

A Justice Department investigation later cleared Loeffler of criminal wrongdoing, but she and her husband liquidated all individual stocks — except for their shares of Sprecher's firm, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of NYSE.

On Nov. 18, the same day that Citadel Securities formally announced its purchase of IMC, with the runoff campaign between Loeffler and Warnock underway, Griffin gave $5,600 to the Senate Georgia Battleground Fund, a PAC established to support both Loeffler and Perdue (who also faces a Jan. 5 runoff). That curious amount may reflect a misunderstanding: A PAC can accept much larger sums, but in this instance Griffin gave the maximum any individual could have donated directly to the two runoff candidates.

The NYSE says that DMM firms like Citadel Securities are "the cornerstone of the NYSE market model." DMMs analyze market data to match buyers with sellers, executing trades both manually and electronically in real time, sometimes in flashes of a second. Their matchmaking also helps limit volatility, such as during this year, which has proved a boom time for Citadel. In return, DMMs collect small fees on massive numbers of transactions, scrape potentially useful data and, to some degree, shape markets.

Citadel Securities, however, also excels in high-frequency trading, where nanoseconds can make a difference. The combination presents the firm with a virtually inimitable advantage that has vaulted it to the top of its industry.

Ben Edwards, a securities law expert and professor at University of Las Vegas Nevada School of Law, told Salon that Citadel's purchase of IMC would give it a greater presence into the market, especially with the recent rise of app-based trading, an emergent focus for Citadel.

"As Citadel grows in size, its view of the market also expands — likely allowing Citadel to become even more efficient in market making and high-speed trading," Edwards said. "As retail trading expands with apps like Robinhood, market makers should profit significantly by executing uninformed trades."

Citadel Securities' buyout of IMC was a consequential transaction, according to the Wall Street Journal. It reduced the number of DMM firms on the world's most famous stock exchange from four to three, and gave Citadel oversight of daily transactions for more than 60% of NYSE listings, "potentially raising concerns that the DMM business is becoming overly concentrated," the Journal reported.

That consolidation was unlikely to impact the real-time experience of regular investors, Edwards told Salon, but the NYSE might see it as beneficial synchronicity.

"The NYSE may actually welcome Citadel's acquisition of a market maker because it aligns their interests to a greater degree," he said. "Although Citadel and NYSE may not always agree, Citadel's purchase of a NYSE market maker likely means that Citadel isn't going to undermine the NYSE or try to shift order flow away from the NYSE. If they did, it would result in less business for their market-making subsidiary."

Last year Citadel joined a number of other major firms — such as Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan, Fidelity Investments and Bank of America — in opening its own exchange, MEMX, that would compete with the NYSE directly.

"We will not fight it," Sprecher said on a call with investors after the MEMX announcement, a notably different approach than his purported detachment from Citadel Securities' bid for IMC. "We think it has spillover benefits for the New York Stock Exchange."

Sprecher and Griffin were the top two donors to Georgia United Victory, the pro-Loeffler PAC. The third-biggest donor gave $500,000. Again, Griffin was one of the biggest individual donors of the 2020 election cycle, ranking sixth out of all Americans, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Sprecher, too, has spent tens of millions of dollars, much of it on his wife's campaign.

But it's also true that before the Nov. 3 general election, GUV apparently received contributions from only a few donors. In the four months between the PAC's July launch and Election Day, Griffin and Sprecher were among only 26 contributors. Griffin's $3 million was exceeded only by Sprecher's $10.5 million, with all other GUV donors chipping in a combined total of about $3 million.

Otherwise, as mentioned above, major Republican donors mostly stayed away from Loeffler during the "jungle primary." That wasn't true of Griffin: Two of his 10 largest donations went to Loeffler, with the rest going to national Republican-oriented committees and to a PAC supporting John James, the Republican candidate taking on Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan.

In the period before the Nov. 3 election, GUV entirely deployed its resources in going after Rep. Doug Collins, Loeffler's principal Republican opponent, and did not spend a dime attacking Warnock or any other Democrat. From Election Day onward, GUV raised only about $2 million — and that came from 850 individual contributions, which together account for less than Griffin's two contributions before the election.

Collins attacked Loeffler's wealth and her stock trading scandal throughout the fall campaign. "Raising money — especially from small donors — is a great barometer of support and it is clear that Doug has a dedicated grassroots army marching with him," Collins campaign spokesperson Dan McLagan told ABC News in July. "Kelly Loeffler is mainly supported by Kelly Loeffler, her super wealthy stock-exchange-owning husband and a bunch of lobbyists. She leads a very small and lonely parade."

Collins, however, had also vigorously supported President Trump's 2017 tax bill, which disproportionately benefited corporate and financial interests and multinational firms. Between 2014 and 2016, Collins voted against multiple efforts to close offshore tax loopholes like the ones Loeffler and Sprecher have so successfully marketed through Intercontinental Exchange.

In other words, there are no obvious political or ideological reasons why Ken Griffin would value Kelly Loeffler so much higher than Doug Collins, or why he was evidently so much more invested in her success than were other GOP mega-donors. As noted above, however, Loeffler sits on the Senate committee that conducts oversight of stock trading.

"It's safe to assume that the donations are being made because Citadel stands to benefit by keeping her in office," Edwards told Salon. "It may be as simple as desiring to keep Republican control over the Senate. If Sen. Sherrod Brown [a liberal Ohio Democrat] gained control of the Senate Banking Committee, it could create political risk and increased oversight for the industry. Griffin may also believe that she's more likely to understand and support their industry than most because of her prior work and husband."

Loeffler estimated wealth of $800 million makes her by far the richest member of the Senate, but that's only 4% of Griffin's Bloomberg-estimated net worth of $20 billion, which makes him one of the 50 richest people in the U.S.

For millions of Americans, 2020 has been a financial nightmare, but for Griffin — who last year bought the most expensive home in the country, a Manhattan penthouse — it has been a bonanza. The acceleration in stock transactions has made Citadel Securities one of the financial world's biggest winners of 2020: The firm doubled its profits in the first half of the year as compared to 2019, increasing Griffin's personal net worth by about a third, or $5 billion, according to Bloomberg.

"Sen. Loeffler's close familial ties to market makers and the NYSE may make it less likely that she'd consider policy reforms which might benefit the public and hurt Griffin's business," Edwards said. "For example, a transaction-based tax would likely significantly shrink overall trading volume. That isn't something I'd expect her, Griffin or the NYSE to support."

While Griffin's $3 million might seem like pocket change for someone with his immense wealth, it is not paltry to most Americans, or to most political campaigns. Loeffler's campaign, for instance, raised $28 million in total, and only $3.8 million of that amount came from individual contributions. Another $23 million came from the candidate herself.

The Loeffler campaign did not reply to Salon's request for comment. Citadel Securities eventually provided a comment from Griffin's spokesperson, printed above in full.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Loeffler's campaign condemns photo with longtime KKK member convicted of beating a Black man

Roger Sollenberger Salon

December 15, 2020

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the unelected multimillionaire Georgia Republican facing a critical runoff election in January, says she had "no idea" that the supporter she recently posed for a selfie with is a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

"Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she...

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parler $ ask fail

Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) attempted to raise money on the right-wing-friendly social media site Parler. It didn't go well.

Loeffler, like other Republican Senators, isn't doing anything about President Donald Trump's loss. As a senator, Loeffler could propose a bill giving confidence to Trump around the election and call for all Republicans to vote on it. Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) could do the same, but he too is mum on the subject.

So, when Loeffler took to Parler asking for election help, it wasn't shocking that she was faced with a slew of attacks.

"I hope you lose you stuck up b*tch. Help Trump and then go away. But you cant (sic) even do that. Your (sic) bought and paid for," said one person.

"Your net worth is literally $500 MILLION dollars (sic). Quit begging for money and write your own check," said another.

See the comments in the tweet below:

Loeffler's husband broke years-long pattern when he dumped his own stock this spring

Roger Sollenberger Salon

November 29, 2020

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the ultra-wealthy unelected Georgia senator facing a runoff election this January that may determine control of the U.S. Senate, came under the scrutiny of government and Senate investigators this spring amid press reports of stock trades made after she attended a private briefing in January about the coronavirus pandemic.

Loeffler argued that she and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, chair of the New York Stock Exchange, had complied with insider trading rules, which require executives of publicly traded companies to wall themselves off from market transactions by setting up a pre-planned investment schedule executed by a third-party broker.

The Republican-led Senate and the Department of Justice both investigated the trades, but both probes were later dropped. It is still unclear, however, what came of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The Loeffler campaign released an ad this spring, called ," which claimed that the "fake news" had "lied" about her trades. VID]

But the broader context of Loeffler and Sprecher's transaction history over the last several years shows that they made a number of significant changes to their pre-scheduled trading plan this year. Those revisions included Sprecher quadrupling sales of stock in his company, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and one of the most influential financial institutions in the world.

A veteran corporate attorney who defends companies in securities cases told Salon that the couple's trading patterns with ICE, especially Sprecher's, got "blown out of the water this year."

"These sales are not explicable based on his prior trading history," the attorney said.

The changes appear to have come as Loeffler was appointed to her Senate seat by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and two weeks before she received an unusually structured $9 million severance package from her husband's company, where she had worked as CEO of a subsidiary that focused on cryptocurrency.

Public filings with the SEC show that the new plan doubled the frequency and more than doubled the volume and value of sales of the couple's ICE stock. The tens of millions of dollars in sales present a separate issue from the hundreds of thousands in sales in individual stocks that first drew scrutiny this spring.

Overall, the couple's 2020 capital gains income for ICE stock alone, $58 million, are more than double they amount they earned in any of the previous four years:

2016: $18.8 million

2017: $13.8 million

2018: $25 million

2019: $15.8 million

2020: $58 million

Last week Loeffler was the subject of a Senate ethics complaint after she asked Georgia voters for "five or 10 bucks" during an interview in the halls of the Senate — a violation of Senate rules and federal law.

"Look, we know that hundreds of millions of dark, liberal money is pouring into our state," Loeffler Fox News anchor Sandra Smith in a Wednesday morning interview. "That's why it's so important that everyone across the country get involved. They can visit Kelly for Senate dot com to chip in five or 10 bucks and get involved, volunteer."

The couple has so far poured $31 million into politics this year, $23 million of it to Loeffler's campaign, according to FEC filings, beginning with a $5 million loan last Dec. 27. About $8 million went elsewhere, including a $1 million donation to a Trump-backing super PAC this April, shortly after the insider trading allegations.

Loeffler and Sprecher also bought a jet in December for Loeffler to use on the campaign trail and trips from Atlanta to Washington, though it appears they may have written off the cost entirely through a corporate loophole in Trump's 2017 tax bill.

Loeffler's Senate counterpart in Georgia, multimillionaire Republican David Perdue, was also accused of insider trading this spring. Last week Salon reported that his trades involving a defense contracting company were the subject of a Senate ethics complaint.

Both candidates now face runoffs. On Election Day, Loeffler edged out Republican rival Rep. Doug Collins, a Trump ally and fiscal hawk who attacked her wealth relentlessly throughout the year. Kemp had appointed Loeffler after the resignation of former Sen. Johnny Isakson, although Trump had recommended Collins.

"Kelly Loeffler is mainly supported by Kelly Loeffler, her super wealthy stock-exchange-owning husband and a bunch of lobbyists," Collins' campaign spokesperson Dan McLagan told ABC News in July. "She leads a very small and lonely parade."

Loeffler, who now faces a January runoff against Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, defended the timing of her ICE sales by pointing to an investment set up in advance and approved by the company. The plan, however, is not her idea: The SEC requires executives at all publicly held companies to trade through such an agreement, allowing them to access cash while guarding against the appearance of insider trading.

And as chairman of the NYSE, Sprecher must also abide by its rules, which define a conflict of interest as "when an individual's private interest interferes in any way — or even appears to interfere — with the interests of the corporation as a whole."

At the time of the trades, Loeffler sat on the Senate Agricultural Committee's subcommittee on commodities, risk management and trade, which directly regulates her husband's company. She recused herself after the trades became public, but still sits on the parent Agriculture Committee. (That committee also oversees her brother's soybean operation.)

"If you worry about looking suspicious, you set this up in advance to say, 'I have nothing to do with these trades,'" Marc Fagel, former director of the SEC's San Francisco office, told Salon. "But that becomes a less meaningful defense when you change your plan, which may appear as if you have nonpublic information, and you risk losing the whole defense. That's what has happened here, somewhere. We just don't know exactly when or why."

Fagel concluded, "I'd counsel my clients hat you'd want to change your plan as infrequently as possible and make it as simple as possible. Generally the best practice is to have a regular sale, a set share amount and a set price. You want to have that new plan set up a quarter in advance."

Loeffler and Sprecher's trading appears to have fit that description for years. But this year they made major changes — perhaps to get tens of millions of dollars in extra liquidity in anticipation of funding Loeffler's political activity.

The largest sales, however, were carried out indirectly through a company called Continental Power Exchange (CPEX), which Sprecher solely owns and which holds more than twice as many shares of ICE as he does in his own name. So far this year, Sprecher has sold 360,000 shares through CPEX for a total of $33 million. Previously he never sold more than 80,000 shares in one year.

In March, ICE responded to reports about the sales in a statement that said its policy included a 30-day waiting period: "Per ICE policy, all trading plans require a 30-day cooling off period from the time the trading plan is adopted to the date of the first transaction."

To comply with that requirement, at the very latest the couple's plan would have been changed the day before Kemp, the Georgia governor, nominated Loeffler to the Senate on Dec. 4: The couple unloaded $8.3 million of ICE stock 29 days later, on Jan. 2.

Those changes would also have been put in place two weeks before Loeffler departed the company on Dec. 20, with a severance package that ultimately totaled some $9 million, after stock options were exercised.

That package, The New York Times reported in May, included more than $1 million in restricted stock and options that would have expired had the company had not taken the unusual step of intervening to make them mature immediately.

Furthermore, filings show that Loeffler cashed in on those options almost immediately, selling 30,000 shares on Jan. 2, 75,000 shares on March 11 and another 26,675 shares in late May. (Previously, Loeffler had personally sold more than 10,000 shares on only two occasions.) All those sales coincided with major CPEX sell-offs.

Typically individuals do not exercise stock options and sell immediately, because the profits of a lump sum in a single year might push them into a higher tax bracket. But Loeffler, already in the highest bracket, would not have those concerns.

The March 11 sale stands out for another reason: For four years, Sprecher only sold on the fourth Wednesday of the month. It's possible that in early December the couple chose the second Wednesday of March to make their largest sale yet — 175,000 shares between them, totaling $15 million — which happened to be just as the markets were crashing. It was also highly fortunate: Had they waited until their typical trading day, March 25, they would have missed out on $2 million in profits.

None of these sales were public at the time. It was only after their disclosure that Loeffler vowed to divest herself of all individual stocks. SEC filings show that she still holds upwards of $8 million in the company, however, and Sprecher currently holds about $475 million.

Furthermore, it is not clear how or when Sprecher structured his 10b5-1 plans to hit these dates. Neither ICE nor the Loeffler campaign would share documents with Salon. SEC experts Salon spoke with said that Sprecher undoubtedly changed his plans for himself and CPEX, upon learning his wife would be a U.S. senator.

Days after she was sworn in, Loeffler was named to the subcommittee that oversees regulation of her husband's company.

"I have worked hard to comply with both the letter and the spirit of the Senate's ethics rules and will continue to do so every day," she said at the time. Loeffler recused herself from the subcommittee in early May, as she was submitting documents to investigators from the DOJ, SEC and Senate.

"There's just not enough here to come to any conclusions, which is the biggest problem," Ben Edwards, a securities law expert at the William Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, told Salon. Edwards called upon a metaphor: "That might be a fire in your neighbor's yard, or he may have just put too many wood chips on the barbecue. It's exactly why we need to reform our transparency laws in government."

Fagel, the former SEC official in San Francisco, echoed the point. "Why should members of Congress be able to trade individual stocks, period?" he asked. "Just take it off the table. Then you don't have this taint of corruption, and cases like this show that's in everyone's interest."

ICE did not provide Salon with 10b5-1 plans for Sprecher or CPEX. The Loeffler campaign did not provide Salon with a 10b5-1 agreement.

In response to Salon's multiple detailed questions, ICE spokesperson Josh King said in an email, "Why don't you send me an email that says 'let's have an off the record conversation so I can be accurate and write smartly.'"

Salon declined. King would not comment further. It is unclear why he believed he could improve the accuracy of Salon's reporting with off-the-record remarks, although it's conceivable he did not want to offer public comments that could affect ICE's market performance or reveal private information.

"They may fear that once they start answering questions they may get more questions," Edwards remarked of the couple's reluctance to transparency. "They may feel it's intrusive and not want to make more than the legally mandated disclosures. It could be that some of their decisions, if they were public, could affect stock performance."

While the Justice Department closed its investigation, it is unclear what became of the SEC's probe into Loeffler and Sprecher. The campaign did not reply to questions, and the SEC would not comment on the existence of investigations. A senior law enforcement official not involved with the matter told Salon that in parallel probes like this one, the SEC's enforcement arm typically makes any decisions about civil citations or settlements independent from the Justice Department.

"The law is one dimension here, and at least on the criminal side it seems like this case was pretty clear-cut," the law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Salon. "But not all wrongs, ethical or otherwise, are crimes."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Gaetz accuses GOP’s Kelly Loeffler of bribing Trump with $50 million to push out her opponent

Matthew Chapman / Raw Story September 24, 2020

On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is accusing Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) of offering President Donald Trump money for his re-election in return for helping her push…

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new poll finds a tight special election contest for Georgia Senate seat

Jeff Singer / Daily Kos September 25, 2020

Monmouth’s newest poll of Georgia’s special election for U.S. Senate finds a very tight race to advance to the all-but-certain January runoff, a result that’s very similar to what several other firms have…

monmouth’s newest poll of Georgia’s special election for U.S. Senate finds a very tight race to advance to the all-but-certain January runoff, a result that’s very similar to what several other firms have found in recent weeks.

Appointed Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler takes first place in the all-party primary with 23%, while Republican Rep. Doug Collins has a narrow 22-21 edge over pastor Raphael Warnock, the favorite of national Democrats, for the crucial second place spot. Two other Democrats, businessman Matt Lieberman and former U.S. Attorney Ed Tarver, are at 11% and 4%, respectively, while Libertarian Brian Slowinski takes 3%. The sample also gives Donald Trump a 47-46 lead in the state.

While the poll finds that there’s still a very real chance that Democrats could get shut out of the runoff, it does show Team Blue in a better position to avoid this nightmare scenario than when Monmouth surveyed Georgia in late July. That poll showed Loeffler at 26%, while Collins held a 20-14 lead over Lieberman for second as Warnock was in fourth with just 9%. Warnock, though, began advertising weeks later, which may have helped him pull ahead of his intra-party rival.

However, if you were hoping that polls like this would entice Lieberman to exit the race and help his party avoid a lockout, think again. On Tuesday night, before this survey was released, Lieberman tweeted, “As to the concern that I could be a spoiler, the political math says otherwise.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/stock-dumping-gop-senators-husband-gave-1-million-to-pro-trump-super-pac-after-insider-trading-scandal-broke/

the husband of stock-dumping Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) donated $1 million to the leading pro-Trump super PAC after news broke of her alleged insider trading.

Jeff Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, donated April 29 to America First Action, according to a report filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, after news broke that he and his wife sold off stock holdings ahead of the coronavirus pandemic, reported Politico.

Loeffler, the richest person in the U.S. Senate, sold off millions of dollars in shares ahead of a massive stock market plunge and after she and other senators were briefed by federal officials about the pandemic threat to American lives and the economy.

The senator’s office said last week she turned over documents regarding the transactions to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee, and Loeffler has insisted that she doesn’t control her own trading.

loeffler, who was appointed to finish retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, is facing a tough GOP primary challenge from Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA).

She has loaned $10 million of her own money to her campaign and pledged more.

Sprecher was not the America First Action’s largest donor last month, because businessman Timothy Mellon donated $10 million to the super PAC.

an 4.2.20

Deadly ignorance’: Georgia GOP governor slammed for falsely claiming ‘we didn’t know’ asymptomatic people can transmit coronavirus

Alex Henderson

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp asserted that the realization one can spread coronavirus despite being asymptomatic was a “game-changer” for him.

420 an