- I'm a lifelong conservative, pro-Second Amendment,
pro-Trump, pro-military, and pro-wall.
- [Natalie] That's Kelly Loeffler,
an un-elected incumbent Republican Senator from Georgia
whose shady financial maneuverings
and refusal to acknowledge
the actual winner of the presidential election
have made headlines nationwide.
As Loeffler's reelection bid to a runoff
against Democrat Raphael Warnock in January 2021,
let's take a look at the career
of WNBA co-owner turned legislator
on behalf of the state that did not vote for her.
I'm Natalie Portman.
And this is the story of Kelly Lynn Loeffler.
She was born in Bloomington, Illinois in 1970.
Bloomington is best known
as the home of State Farm Insurance,
or seemingly every other commercial on television.
But it wouldn't take long
for Loeffler to dominate the airwaves herself.
She attended undergrad
at the University of Illinois in Champaign
where she was a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority.
She went on to graduate from Chicago's DePaul University
with an MBA in 1999.
Out of school, Loeffler worked at Toyota for four years
where according to her LinkedIn,
she was a district account manager.
From there she hopped to Citibank,
then to William Blair, an investment banking company.
And then eventually to Intercontinental Exchange,
or ICE, in 2002.
According to the company's website,
it builds, operates and advances global markets
through information, technology and expertise.
AKA, it owns financial and commodities exchanges,
including the New York Stock Exchange.
She quickly climbed the company ladder,
securing a seat as a top lieutenant
for the company's CEO, Jeff Sprecher.
In 2004, Loeffler married that CEO
and climbed the ladder again,
taking over as head of marketing shortly after.
While at ICE, Loeffler and Sprecher's company
provided a platform for, as Mother Jones noted,
"Highly speculative unregulated energy trading
that ended up causing an Enron-like scandal
and costing residents of Georgia millions of dollars."
In 2006, a giant hedge fund called Amaranth
controlled up to 70% of the entire natural gas market
on the New York Mercantile Exchange,
AKA NYMEX, an exchange regulated by the US government.
And seeing red flags around Amaranth's strategy,
namely high price volatility for natural gas,
NYMEX was duty bound to step in.
NYMEX told Amaranth to reduce its natural gas positions.
Amaranth agreed to do so,
but what they really did was just shuffle
the highly speculative natural gas transactions
to an electronic energy exchange
owned by Loeffler's firm, ICE.
It just so happens that fine print in US legislation
lays electronic energy exchanges
outside of US government oversight.
Loeffler and her cronies profited off the move
at the expense of working people in Georgia.
The Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia
calculated that its 243,000 customers
paid an extra $18 million in the winter of 06 and 07.
In 2013, ICE bought the New York Stock Exchange
for over $8 billion.
Along the way, Loeffler bought a minority stake
in the WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream,
before becoming a full-time co-owner in 2011.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution notes,
why this is a particularly interesting venture
for Loeffler of all people.
"The WNBA has a history of appealing
to Black to LGBTQ fans,
both groups far from Trump's base.
Plus, the league has a reputation
for supporting progressive causes,
like a 2018 initiative that allowed fans
to donate a portion of ticket sales to Planned Parenthood,
an abortion rights group.
This doesn't go unnoticed by Loeffler though.
She told AJC, "Frankly I think Americans have been saddened
by the politicization of sports
because it is something that uniquely unites people."
However, the Senator from Georgia's idea
of uniquely uniting people is far different.
When she was eventually appointed to the Senate,
Loeffler, who once called the Black Lives Matter movement,
a very divisive organization,
gave a large portion of her Senate salary
to anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion groups.
One of the organizations she donated to,
groups homosexuality with bestiality and incest
as forms of sexual immorality.
Seems divisive.
But backing up a bit.
In 2018, Loeffler left Intercontinental Exchange
for a CEO position at an ICE subsidiary company
called Bakkt,
which according to Fortune Magazine,
aims at democratizing cryptocurrencies.
She must have earning a plenty penny too.
She and her husband made history in Atlanta
for purchasing possibly the most expensive real estate ever
in the city.
According to Atlanta Magazine,
the $10.5 million mansion
is modeled in the style of an old European estate,
Descante as it's called,
is a stucco, steel and limestone structure
that boasts Versailles parquet in the dinning room,
a library with a secret passage to the living room
and a nineteenth century pool house from France.
But there's shopping spree didn't end with modest homes
Loeffler and her husband had donated $3.2 million
to political committees,
3% of which went to Democrats.
One of their biggest spending sprees went to a super PAC
supporting Willard Mitt Romney.
The couple coughed up $750,000
in support of the Senator from Utah.
But just giving exorbitant amounts of money to candidates
wouldn't be enough for Loeffler.
in 2019, she applied to succeed incumbent Senator
Johnny Isakoson,
who resigned from the post setting health reasons,
although Loeffler wasn't Trump's first choice,
he wanted Doug Collins.
She was tapped by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp
for the position,
where she's been serving the American people ever since.
It's unclear if they want to be served by her
considering she's now in a runoff election
but nonetheless she is Georgia's first female Senator
in 98 years.
- I'm proud to announce that conservative businesswoman
political outsider Kelly Loeffler,
will be George's next US Senator.
- [Natalie] CNBC notes,
Loeffler is by far the richest member of Congress
sharing a net worth of about $500 million
and boy would she use it.
A novel coronavirus ignited an outbreak
of a deadly disease called COVID-19 in China
in December of 2019.
The disease spread quickly with the first case in the US
occurring the following month.
By March of 2020,
the COVID-19 outbreak was in its nascent stage.
Just beginning to take hold in the US.
Then in early 2020,
Loeffler and her colleagues
sat through some closed door meetings.
Right after those meetings,
Loeffler sold a bunch of stocks, a whole bunch.
Directly before the market took a nose dive,
she sold in total stocks valued up to $18.7 million.
That's $18.7 million.
She dumped her retail stocks
and bought shares in DuPont,
which produces medical supplies.
Instead of warning the American people
after getting vital information,
she offloaded millions and stocks,
and then publicly said this,
- The good news is the consumer is strong.
The economy is strong. Jobs are growing.
Our president has done a fantastic job,
making sure that we're in the best position
to manage through this situation.
- [Natalie] However, Loeffler claims
the sales were completely out of her hands.
She claims the transactions were carried out
by her and her husband's financial advisor
without their knowledge.
You sold over a million dollars in stocks
in your own personal portfolio
before the market went down.
Were you trading on inside information
about what was coming?
- Well, I'm really glad you asked
because I do wanna set the record straight.
I've seen some of those stories
and it's absolutely false and it could not be true.
So, if you actually look at the personal transaction reports
that were filed,
it notices at the bottom
that I'm only informed of my transactions
after they occur several weeks.
- [Natalie] As Loeffler cashed in
while hundreds of thousands of Americans died,
she launched a re-election bid.
The race between Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock
was so tight.
It triggered an automatic run-off for January, 2021.
Meaning the Senate majority hangs in the balance
of two races in Georgia,
Loeffler and Warnock
and Republican David Purdue,
who also sold off a bunch of stock
after closed door briefings about the coronavirus
and Democrat Jon Ossoff.
These two races,
will decide which party controls the Senate
and gains the power to shape Joe Biden's agenda.
Loeffler has an uphill battle to her reelection.
Early polls suggest Warnock has the edge.
He also has most of the WNBA on his side,
including players from the team Loeffler co-owns.
Loeffler and Purdue have since called
for George's Republican Secretary of State,
Brad Raffensperger resignation.
Citing without evidence, failures in the election.
It's unclear if they're referring to their own campaigns
or to the democratic process,
whatever the case may be control of the Senate
hangs on two people,
who have shown they're willing
to put their own bank accounts
before the American people.
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