Kelly Loeffler Tipped As Trump’s Pick For Agriculture Secretary After Major Campaign Contributions

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 President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name former Sen. Kelly Loeffler his nominee for Agriculture secretary, CNN reported Friday, elevating the Georgia Republican after she and her billionaire husband spent more than $5 million boosting Trump during the election, ranking among his top donors.


Trump is expected to offer Loeffler the Department of Agriculture Friday during a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, according to anonymous sources cited by CNN, after the former senator was already named a co-chair for Trump’s inauguration committee.

Loeffler is married to billionaire Jeff Sprecher, who founded global stock exchange operator Intercontinental Exchange, and she has long been a major GOP donor.

Loeffler donated approximately $3 million to political action committees supporting Trump or Trump’s campaign during the 2023-2024 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission filings through Oct. 16.

Sprecher also donated $2.2 million to Trump or Trump-affiliated PACs in his name during that period, ranking the couple as part of a few dozen billionaires who spent more than $1 million on Trump’s election.

Loeffler separately gave $1 million to the Republican National Committee, which a spokesperson told Forbes in August was considered to be in support of Trump.

Federal filings on campaign donations are only available through Oct. 16, so it’s possible Loeffler and/or Sprecher gave more money to support Trump right before Election Day that won’t be publicly reported for another few weeks.


Who Is Kelly Loeffler?

While she gained national attention in Congress, Loeffler’s career has primarily been as a businesswoman. She worked as an executive at Sprecher’s Intercontinental Exchange and went on to run cryptocurrency company Bakkt, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, R, appointed Loeffler to the Senate in 2019 to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Johnny Isakson when he resigned. Loeffler served as a senator only briefly from 2020 to 2021, when Sen. Raphael Warnock unseated her in a special election.

Loeffler garnered controversy in the Senate for her stock moves in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, selling approximately $20 million worth of shares between late January and March after lawmakers received private briefings on the pandemic’s potentially devastating impact. The Senate Ethics Committee cleared her of any wrongdoing in June 2020, but Loeffler said in an April 2020 op-ed that she was divesting from her individual stocks even as she maintained she and her family “never used any confidential information I received while performing my Senate duties as a means of making a private profit.” Loeffler also stepped down from the Senate Agriculture Committee’s subcommittee on commodities and trade amid the controversy, though she remained on the full Agriculture Committee. Though she was cleared of wrongdoing, the controversy continued to be an issue during her ultimately unsuccessful race against Warnock.

Assuming she is announced, Loeffler will be one of a number of loyal Trump allies that the president-elect is now rewarding with top positions in his administration, along with figures like campaign manager Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as attorney general and longtime adviser Stephen Miller as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy. Loeffler is not the only billionaire donor to make it into Trump’s administration, with the president-elect also naming Linda McMahon, wife of wrestling mogul Vince McMahon, to lead the Education Department after she similarly poured millions into his election. Elon Musk, who became one of Trump’s most outspoken supporters before the election while also spending millions through his America PAC, is also set to run a “Department of Government Efficiency” alongside billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy when Trump takes the White House, though that’s expected to operate outside of the government. Trump’s election was propped up by billionaires donating heavily to super PACs supporting the ex-president, as Trump’s main campaign fund—which is subject to limits on donations, unlike super PACs—significantly lagged behind Vice President Kamala Harris’ cash haul. While Harris outraised Trump by nearly three-to-1 ahead of Election Day in terms of their main campaign funds, federal filings suggest the top 10 super PACs supporting Trump actually took in more money than those supporting Harris.

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