Corona Corruption
Follow the money... and the PPE... and the ventilators
Trump campaign data firm scores $2.85 million in PPP funds
Corruption is what Trump does best and corruption is already creating a ton of controversy for the Paycheck Protection Program. The first $350 billion ran out in two weeks, leaving 80% of applicants in limbo. Four big banks are already being sued for prioritizing bigger corporations over the “mom and pop” companies who thought they would be getting relief.
While the Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to be “first-come-first-served,” at least one Trump-favored company seems to have jumped the line. Phunware is a publicly traded digital data firm deeply embedded in the Trump re-election campaign. It made millions in revenue from Trump in 2019 and is expected to do so again this year. Phunware received $2.85 million in PPP funding, or more than 14 times the average PPP loan.
According to CBS: “Phunware applied for its loan through JPMorgan Chase on April 8 and received the money on April 10.” In contrast, Lou Rabon, the CEO of Cyber Defense Group, told CBS his company applied for a loan of less than $200,000 on April 6, the first day JPMorgan Chase began accepting applications. He has yet to see a dime.
Meanwhile, NBC News reports three more companies with connections to the Trump Administration received a total of $18.3 million from in PPP loans:
Hallador Energy, a coal company in Denver that last year hired Trump’s former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to lobby on its behalf, “snared $10 million under the program.”
Flotek Industries, an energy services company in Houston, that Richard Grenell, Trump’s acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, recently worked for as a consultant received a $4.6 million loan.
MiMedx Group, a maker of skin grafts, whose former chief executive, Parker H. Petit, is under indictment for securities fraud and awaiting trial in the southern district of New York, received $10 million. Petit was Donald Trump’s finance chairman in Georgia in 2016.
Knowing what we know about Trump abusing his power to reward friends at taxpayer expense, the government-backed “loans” revealed so far may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of PPP cash being rushed into the bank accounts of Trump allies.
For Phunware, the $2.85 million they scored will help see them through 2020 even if Trump refuses to pay an invoice or two (as he has been known to do).
PPE purchased for the VA gets seized and redirected to “Jared’s” stockpile
As has been widely reported, states are going to extreme lengths to source personal protective equipment (PPE) for their healthcare workers. The challenge has been made especially acute: a) because of the 70 days Trump wasted at the start of the pandemic; and b) because of the corrupt manner in which son-in-law Jared Kushner has managed the national equipment stockpile since Trump finally put him in charge of replenishing and managing it.
Trump and Kushner have repeatedly indicated in subtle and not-so-subtle ways their willingness to play games, reward friends, and demand “hostage videos” from enemies in exchange for doling out supplies from what Jared famously (and slimily) called “our stockpile.”
Governors have been forced to bid against each other and hide purchases from Kushner lest he does to them what he did to the GOP Governor in Massachusetts, from whom he “confiscated” 3 million masks at the start of April in a seizure at the Port of New York.
Now Kushner’s at it again, this time grabbing 5 million masks intended for nurses at Veterans Affairs hopitals, forcing many of them to wear the same mask for an entire week.
As Erin Kissane, the Managing Editor of The COVID Tracking Project said on Twitter: “These PPE seizures continue to be the most fucked-up thing that I never saw coming. Put the burden of purchase on states and agencies, seize their lawful purchases, redistribute through ??? process run by ??? potentially corrupt middlemen. It's like a cartoon villain's plot.”
The Mob-Boss-in-Chief confesses to another quid pro quo
Exactly as predicted by Professor Pamela Karlan during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings, Trump has used the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to seek every kind of quid pro quo imaginable from governors across the country in return for the federal assistance that Trump should be delivering unreservedly in his role as protector of the American people.
IMPOTUS hasn’t even made a secret of it. He’s bragged at the White House podium that he wouldn’t even call Governor Gretchen Whitmer, aka “that woman from Michigan” because she wasn’t being nice to him. He proudly showed a propaganda video of NY Governor Cuomo praising him, regretting only that, “they left out the good part.”
On Saturday, he openly connected the delivery of ventilators to Colorado not to a request from the Democratic Governor Jared Polis, but to the re-election campaign of vulnerable Republican Senator Cory Gardner.
Even during a pandemic that he allowed to happen, the Mob-Boss-in-Chief is still bribing and extorting at every opportunity. And while Al Capone was ultimately convicted for tax evasion, that won’t be happening to Trump any time soon. Because of the pandemic that he allowed to happen, the Supreme Court hearing about Trump’s tax returns has been postponed.
Unprecedented from The Daily Edge is dedicated to exposing Trump’s and the GOP's corruption, cheating and conning. Because losing in 2020 is not an option.
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