Sen. Perdue Helped Defense Contractor--and Sold Off Its Stock
Source: The Daily Beast
Right before he was put in charge of a powerful Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the U.S. Navy, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) began buying up stock in a company that made submarine parts. And once he began work on a bill that ultimately directed additional Navy funding for one of the firm’s specialized products, Perdue sold off the stock, earning him tens of thousands of dollars in profits.
In January 2019, Perdue was named as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower. It was good home-state politics for Perdue: Georgia is home to one of the most important Naval facilities on the East Coast, the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. And his appointment was seen as a win for the submarine segment of the Navy, with trade publications calling it a “coup” for submariners.
But in the month before he took over the job, Perdue did something unusual: he acquired up to $190,000 worth of stock in BWX Technologies, a company he had never invested in before. The Virginia-based firm had lucrative contracts with the U.S. Navy to develop high-tech components for its fleet of nuclear submarines—and it was looking to expand that business when lawmakers took on the 2019 version of the sweeping annual legislation that sets funding benchmarks for the U.S. military, called the National Defense Authorization Act.
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From February to July, as he was shaping the defense bill and working for that submarine funding, Perdue reported selling off all his shares of BWX—reaping a healthy profit in the process. The senator’s final financial disclosure form for the year 2019 reported earnings of $15,000 to $50,000 in his trading of BWX. Due to the way congressional financial disclosures are structured—they ask lawmakers to classify the value of their assets in broad categories, not specific amounts—it is not possible to know the exact dollar value of Perdue’s profits, or that of his purchases and sales of stock. But the company’s stock price also rose from the time Perdue first bought, in December and January, through the six-month window during which he sold off the shares.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sen-perdue-helped-defense-contractor-and-sold-off-its-stock/ar-BB1b92jY?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=DELLDHP
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