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MajesticLion

MajesticLion

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From August 2020. Much like self-appointed salary increases and health care, the loopholes providing exemptions from conflicts of interest continue to cause problems.




The Richest Politician On Capitol Hill Is Likely Georgia’s Recently Appointed, Controversial Sen. Kelly Loeffler


As their fortune expanded, so did their lifestyle. In 2009, Sprecher and Loeffler purchased a seven-bedroom, 15,000-square-foot Atlanta estate for more than $10 million. When the home first hit the market, it boasted over-the-top features like a pool house with sections imported from a castle in France, a fossilized dinosaur footprint under glass and a hearth from Cambridge University in the U.K., according to a 2007 story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2010, Loeffler, who played basketball in high school, purchased a stake in the city’s WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream.

Since 2014, the value of ICE stock has more than doubled. Loeffler and Sprecher have also bought three homes in Florida, a condo in Chicago and a $4.3 million pad along the Georgia coastline. They used their home base in Atlanta to host charity events and political fundraisers, like a reported $25,000-a-head event for Mitt Romney.

Events led to connections and connections to opportunities. When Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) retired at the end of 2019, Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Loeffler to fill his seat. She left her position running an ICE subsidiary and took office in January 2020. By March, she found herself caught up in controversy.

Loeffler denied any wrongdoing related to her stock trades. The Senate Select Committee on Ethics found no evidence that she violated federal law or Senate rules. But as part of a reputation-rebuilding effort, she announced, via a Wall Street Journal op-ed, that she was planning to divest from publicly traded equities in managed accounts. While that would allow her to avoid questions over her ownership in companies like Cisco or FedEx or Pfizer, it left one very large, conflict-causing asset in her family’s portfolio: a more than $500 million stake in ICE.

In other words, the couple’s plans to “divest” looked a lot like the way Donald Trump divested. They said they would get rid of individual stock holdings—a sliver of the family fortune—while holding on to a stake in the core business, ICE. That meant that, in the eyes of government watchdog Craig Holman, Loeffler remains “a walking conflict of interest.”
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