Leon Cooperman Will Spend However Many Million It Takes To Ensure People Think "Guy Who Threw A Hissy Fit When Obama Didn't Write His Granddaughter A Handwritten Thank You Note For Her Poems" And Not "Insider Trading" When They Hear His Name

FYI.

Author:
Bess Levin
Updated:
Jan 14, 2019
Original:
Oct 12, 2016

As you may have heard, last month the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Omega Advisors founder Leon Cooperman with insider trading (after his son altered the regulator to some shady trading activity he'd noticed). According to Cooperman, the charges are baseless. And although, he says, he could've settled them by simply cutting a 7-figure check, he'll spend 3 or 4 or 5 times that amount to make sure when people hear "Leon Cooperman" or "L. Coops" or "Big Daddy Cooperman" or "The Coopmeister," the first thing that pops into their heads is the times he drew parallels between Obama’s rise to power and that of Adolf Hitler or when he lost his mind because the President of the free world didn't pen a handwritten thank-note to Coops' granddaughter for her book of poems (though Michelle did) and not "securities fraud."

Cooperman has maintained his innocence and is dedicating what he called “astronomical” resources to clearing his name...“We could have settled this matter with the SEC for an amount that is far less than I donate to charity every year,” Cooperman said in a statement released Tuesday. “But I refused to do so because I know that we acted appropriately and lawfully.” Cooperman said he could have settled the charges for $8 million but said that only people who have done something wrong should pony up settlement fees. He recalled Ken Langone telling him that the best money he ever spent was the $30 million outlay to defend himself against former New York Gov. and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Cooperman trying to clear name after insider trading charge [NYP]

News

Last November, hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman penned an "Open Letter To The President Of The United States of America," in which he detailed the many ways Barack Obama was pissing him off. The Omega Advisors founder accused the President (and his "minions") of engaging in class warfare, expressed disbelief that he could attack "capitalists who...fill store shelves at Christmas" and still sleep at night, and advised Obama to "eschew the polarizing vernacular of political militancy," lest he lose* Cooperman's vote the next year. While LC says that he received a major outpouring of support for his words ("[he] keeps a bulging manila folder of congratulatory notes in his office"), others were less than pleased at what they saw as a guy who actually has done pretty okay under Obama lashing out because his feelings were hurt on the occasions the president was perceived to have a "tone" in his voice when discussing the mega-wealthy ("If I knew where you lived, I’d put a bomb in your car," one person wrote Cooperman to say). Similarly, Cooperman's suggestion, on at least two occasions, that America should be worried about the startling parallels between Obama's rise to power and that of Adolf Hitler,** was met with mixed reviews, including one by his wife in which she called him a "schmuck." And while some*** have found it preposterous that Cooperman would paint himself as a victim of Obama, their astonishment speaks to not knowing the whole story, i.e. exactly what this man- no, this monster- did to Leon. Last July, before he had written the letter, Cooperman was invited to the White House for a reception to honor wealthy philanthropists who had signed Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least fifty per cent of their net worth to charity. At the event, Cooperman handed the President two copies of “Inspired: My Life (So Far) in Poems,” a self-published book written by Courtney Cooperman, his fourteen-year-old granddaughter. Cooperman was surprised that the President didn’t send him a thank-you note or that Malia and Sasha Obama, for whom the books were intended as a gift and to whom Courtney wrote a separate letter, didn’t write to Courtney. (After Cooperman grumbled to a few friends, including Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, Michelle Obama did write. Booker, who was also a recipient of Courtney’s book, promptly wrote her “a very nice note,” Cooperman said.) Now do you understand? Now do you understand? Even Hitler would have sent SOMETHING. Super-Rich Irony [New Yorker] Earlier: Leon Cooperman Doesn't Like The Tone Of President Obama's Voice *Just messing about him ever being in a position to "lose" it, of course. **Settle down, he wasn't saying Obama IS Hitler, would would be biologically impossible, he was just saying Obama is the second coming of Hitler, which is something people should be aware of: “You know, the largest and greatest country in the free world put a forty-seven-year-old guy that never worked a day in his life and made him in charge of the free world,” Cooperman told the New Yorker in May. “Not totally different from taking Adolf Hitler in Germany and making him in charge of Germany because people were economically dissatisfied. Now, Obama’s not Hitler. I don’t even mean to say anything like that. But it is a question that the dissatisfaction of the populace was so great that they were willing to take a chance on an untested individual.” ***Mrs. Cooperman, for example.: She is still a liberal, a position that puts her in the minority in their social circle. “She can be a socialist because she’s married to a capitalist,” Cooperman says of his wife, who is strongly pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. She calls Todd Akin, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry “morons,” and she worries about the underclass. “I care more about the disadvantaged people of America,” she said, comparing her politics with those of her husband.