From The Daily Beast:
Two weeks after Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) helped to dilute a rule that governed the prepaid debit card industry, he reported acquiring stock in a company that stood to benefit from the rollback of those regulations.
In early 2017, Perdue was pushing to overturn a recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau measure that, among other things, imposed new regulations on the growing prepaid debit card industry—including requirements that they be more transparent about fees and penalties, and extend the fraud and theft protections enjoyed by normal account holders to those with prepaid cards. The rule was not completely overturned, as Perdue wished, but it was rolled back.
A review of Perdue’s trading of shares of Atlanta-based financial company First Data reveals that an investment firm owned by the senator and his wife, and for which he serves as a director, bought and sold substantial shares in the company from June 2017 to April 2019. Perdue has been among the most active traders in Congress. But of the more than 400 companies in which he’s bought and sold stock since taking office in 2015, he’s reported more transactions involving First Data—a major card payment processor with a significant business in prepaid cards—than any other company but one.
By the way, Perdue has been feeling the heat from Jon Ossoff’s (D. GA) attacks:
Brad Means: What about the incumbent Senator David Perdue? Do you think he’s doing a bad job overall?
Jon Ossoff: I think Senator Perdue is the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with Washington. I mean, this is a man who sells meetings for corporate PAC checks. He was aggressively trading vaccine and medical stocks early this year while he was telling us that the risk from this virus to our health was low while he was insisting the impact on economic growth would be little, that kind of self-serving, self-dealing corruption is what’s wrong with politics today. It’s not about David Perdue’s political party. It’s about his character, responding to a public health emergency and being honest with the people about threats to our health and prosperity. These are basic functions of government and basic responsibilities of the leaders that we entrust with this kind of power and authority. And he wasn’t level with us about the threats that we face. They drag their feet; they deny what was going on. They sent mixed messages, politicized the response didn’t allow the public health experts to lead. And the emergence of a deadly virus is not the fault of any politician, but that the quality of our government’s response is 100% the responsibility of politicians. The federal government has botched this response. And David Perdue was echoing all the president’s denials the entire time.
Brad Means: Yeah, I was gonna ask you that, we heard reports in recent days about the president possibly downplaying and in his own words saying that he wanted to play it down when it came to the pandemic. So, it was not the cause of panic nationwide. Are you trying to paint David Perdue with that same brush now?
Jon Ossoff: I don’t need to paint David Perdue one way or the other, his own words speak for himself. I mean, just like President Trump, David Perdue was getting briefings on Capitol Hill behind closed doors about the reality of the threat and how dangerous this virus was. But out in public, what he was telling the rest of us was that there was not gonna be a significant uptick in cases that the risk to our health was low. That the impact on economic growth would be little. I mean, Brad, those are his own words. And at the same time to be vigorously adjusting his stock portfolio, dumping his casino, shares buying medical stock. What’s that all about? I mean, we deserve better than this.
And his attacks ads have been brutal:
That’s why Perdue is pathetically trying this route:
With U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s re-election chances teetering on a knife’s edge, the Republican is talking more about himself as a “bipartisan problem solver” — and less about his reputation as one of President Donald Trump’s most loyal allies.
Democrat Jon Ossoff is keen to remind Georgians of the first-term incumbent’s voting record and history of stock trades, which he casts as a reflection of all that’s wrong with a “corrupt” Washington establishment.
While Georgia’s other U.S. Senate contest soaks up more attention, the race between Ossoff and Perdue has more quietly become one of the nation’s most competitive. Recent polls show no clear leader and a growing number of prognosticators rate it a tossup.
Let’s get ready to flip Georgia Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Ossoff, Warnock, Biden and their fellow Georgia Democrats campaigns:
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