Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) sold stock in an online travel booking company immediately before the Trump administration announced a ban on air travel from Europe, Bloomberg News reports. Loeffler had acquired the stock just days earlier. She dumped about $46,000 in Booking Holdings stock on March 10 and 11, less than a week after buying the shares. After markets closed on the eleventh, the Trump administration announced the new European travel restrictions. The following day, Booking Holdings’ stock value declined by more than 11 percent. The stock trades will likely fuel scrutiny of financial transactions by Loeffler and her husband, the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, that occurred as Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat in January, received private briefings on the novel coronavirus. As first reported by The Daily Beast, Loeffler and her husband sold between $1.2 million and $3.1 million in stock in the immediate aftermath of one of those closed-door briefings. Loeffler maintains that all of the transactions were handled by a third-party investment adviser, and that she had no communications with that adviser or input into the trading decisions.
