'Utterly inexcusable': Sen. Perdue slammed for new insider trading allegations

Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff slammed his opponent David Perdue on Thursday as new allegations of insider trading against the incumbent Republican senator surfaced.

The new allegations are the latest in a long line of accusation leveled at Perdue surrounding his stocks portfolio.

“David Perdue’s corruption and self-dealing are flagrant,” Ossoff tweeted on Twitter Thursday. “He is blatantly exploiting his office to line his own pockets. This conduct is utterly inexcusable.”

He added that senators should be prohibited across the board from participating in the trade of individual stocks.

“Ban Senators from trading individual stocks,” he tweeted. “Period.”

The Daily Beast reported this week that in late 2018, a month before he was named chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower, Perdue “acquired up to $190,000 worth of stock in BWX Technologies, a company he had never invested in before.”

BWX Technologies is a Virginia-based company that manufactures high-tech submarine parts for the Navy.

In his role as subcommittee chair, Perdue helped shape the National Defense Authorization Act, which garnered $4.7 billion for Virginia-class submarines.

The new report alleged that he sold off his stocks in BWX Technologies while simultaneously working on the NDAA. He purportedly netted $15,000 to $50,000 in the trade, according to his financial disclosures.

Perdue’s office told The Daily Beast that scrutiny regarding the trades was unwarranted and any questions surrounding his stocks portfolio had been “asked and answered.”

“Senator Perdue doesn’t manage his trades, they are handled by outside financial advisers without his prior input or approval,” a Perdue spokesperson told the outlet. “No amount of lies from liberal media outlets or Democratic political groups will change that fact.”

Perdue is defending his seat in a runoff election against Ossoff set for Jan. 5, which along with another special election in the state will decide control of the Senate.

The STOCK Act, a law implemented in 2012, prevents senators from using nonpublic knowledge gleaned in an official capacity to make financial trading decisions. And it’s not the first time Perdue has been scrutinized for allegedly violating that law.

In 2017, Perdue fought on the Senate floor to water down federal regulations for prepaid debit card providers — then allegedly bought some stakes in prepaid debit card provider FirstData, which stood to profit from weakened regulations.

At the time, Perdue told the Daily Beast any allegations of financial impropriety were “categorically false.”

In January, Perdue was alleged to have invested in DuPont de Nemours, a company that makes personal protective equipment — the very same day he attended a classified Senate briefing on the spread of COVID-19.

The senator’s campaign has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

During Perdue and Ossoff’s first campaign debate in October, Ossoff criticized the incumbent over his insider trading allegations in a video that quickly went viral.

“Perhaps Sen. Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic if you hadn’t been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading,” Ossoff said, referring to Perdue’s mishandling of the crisis. “It’s not just that you’re a crook, Senator. It’s that you’re attacking the health of the people that you represent.”

Perdue’s fellow senator, Kelly Loeffler, also came under fire this week for alleged ethics violations and has previously faced a later-dismissed probe by the Senate Ethics Committee into insider trading allegations. She, too, is vying to keep her Senate seat in a January runoff election against Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Sen. Perdue’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.