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On Jan. 24, the same day she attended a private briefing hosted by the Senate Health Committee on the coronavirus outbreak, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) sold between $50,001 and $100,000 worth of stock from Resideo Technologies, The Daily Beast reports. Since then, Resideo's stock price has fallen by more than half.
Records show that between Jan. 24 and Feb. 14, Loeffler and her husband, New York Stock Exchange Chairman Jeff Sprecher, sold stock worth between $1.3 million and $3.1 million. Loeffler, who is worth an estimated $500 million, also made two purchases of stock in technology companies. One of those companies, Citrix, offers teleworking software, and she bought stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000.
The 15 stocks Loeffler reported selling during that time period have since lost, on average, more than a third of their value, The Daily Beast reports. As late as March 10, Loeffler was tweeting that "the consumer is strong, the economy is strong, & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe."
Loeffler wasn't the only senator to sell off large stock holdings while learning about the magnitude of the global coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, unloaded between $628,000 and $1.7 million of his stocks on Feb. 13, during a time when he received daily classified briefings on the coronavirus.
Update 12:50 a.m.: Loeffler claimed in response to the Daily Beast article that she doesn't trade her own stocks and was unaware of what her investment advisers had done until Feb. 16.
As confirmed in the periodic transaction report to Senate Ethics, I was informed of these purchases and sales on 02/16/2020 – three weeks after they were made.
— Kelly Loeffler (@KLoeffler) March 20, 2020
