Say what you will about Georgia’s Republican leadership team: They are corrupt and incompetent and terrible. That’s mostly what I wanted to say. First you had Republican Gov. (and anti-democracy cheerleader) Brian Kemp dragging his ass on doing anything proactive to help his constituents during the beginnings and middle of the COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. Now, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia seems to have made sure he was able to wet his beak before the proverbial shit hit the fan.
According to the AJC, Perdue was a busy little bee on the stock market last month, with 82 transactions dated to March 3, 2020. This came a couple of weeks after the Senate Intelligence Committee was given a closed-door briefing on the potential of a COVID-19 pandemic. Sen. Perdue seems to have been following the lead of North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr and fellow Georgian and Republican junior U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, both of who dumped millions in stocks in the days and weeks proceeding the security briefing.
Like Burr and Loeffler, Perdue has already said that while this may look like a duck, walk like a duck, and sound like a duck, it’s really a swan. It’s a swan wrapped in a flag with a red MAGA hat on top. In general, Sen. Perdue is the kind of arrogant, pig-headed elitist we have come to expect from the Republican Party, and also an untrustworthy narrator of his own story. For example, how prescient of Perdue to decide to buy no less than $65,000 in DuPont de Nemours stock on Jan. 24—the very day of the security briefing. DuPont is a chemical company that supplies the kind of personal protective equipment (PPE) medical professionals are clamoring for across the country. Over the next couple of weeks, Perdue made sure to invest a total of about $185,000 in DuPont stock.
Coincidentally, Sen. Perdue also sold off shares of casino company stocks while buying about $50,000 worth of shares of at-home streaming service Netflix. The AJC points out that Perdue did also sell a lot of Kroger’s grocery store shares, which have gone up with demand. Maybe Perdue just has just dumb luck ? Or maybe Perdue is just dumb, and was lucky to be in on the ground floor of a new scam in this ever- corrupt administration?
Sign and send the petition to Congress: Ban the practice of government officials trading individual stocks while in office.