First reported by the Daily Beast and now confirmed by the New York Times, Georgia Senator David Perdue (R) steered billions of spending towards submarine contracts and made a nice profit with the stocks of a submarine vendor at the same time. The Daily Beast lays it out:
In January 2019, Perdue was named as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower. [...]
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.
Perdue would have a key role in shaping the NDAA as Seapower chairman, and later as one of the few lawmakers hand-picked by party leadership to hammer out the final version of the bill between the House and Senate. By the time the bill passed the Senate in June, Perdue touted several wins—one of which was securing $4.7 billion for Virginia-class submarines. As it happens, BWX is one of two to three vendors with Pentagon contracts to design and make key parts for Virginia-class submarines, including nuclear reactors that power them and the systems that launch missiles from the submarines.
So, did the investment into BWX Technologies pay off? Well yes, it did. When Perdue later sold the stock, he made a nice profit of around 25%, the NYT reports:
Mr. Perdue bought a total of $38,000 to $305,000 worth of BWX on dates when prices averaged about $40 per share and never closed above $43, according to a Times analysis of Senate filings. He sold his stock on dates in 2019 when prices averaged more than $50 per share and never closed below $49.
Perdue’s defense is that his trades are handled by outside financial advisors without his input or approval. But this totally misses the point. Because Perdue does not use a blind trust, he is always aware about his holdings. So he knew that he would profit personally from contracts for Virginia-class submarines when he was a powerful negotiator in Congress. and pushed to spend billions of dollars. This might not be illegal, but is also definitely not the way any public servant should operate.
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