Trump officials overruled Pentagon to approve pandemic loan, emails show

Source: Washington Post

Trump officials overruled Pentagon to approve pandemic loan, emails show

House subcommittee report finds White House and Cabinet officials pushed for $700 million in aid for Yellow Corp.

By Yeganeh Torbati and Jeff Stein
Today at 9:00 a.m. EDT

Senior Trump administration officials overruled Pentagon staffers to provide a politically connected trucking firm with hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic aid after a concerted lobbying effort, according to documents released by House Democrats on Wednesday.

In 2020, career employees at the Defense Department determined that Kansas-based Yellow Corp. was not “critical to maintaining national security” and therefore did not qualify for a loan program created by Congress earlier in the pandemic, the investigation found. They communicated that decision to the Treasury Department on June 24, 2020, according to emails quoted in the report.

But the Trump appointees ignored that determination after a newly revealed phone call between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on June 26, 2020, that was set up to discuss “YRC and DOD certification,” according to the Democrats’ report. (Yellow Corp. was formerly named YRC Worldwide.) Esper then certified the company as “critical to maintaining national security” for the purposes of the loan.

The $700 million loan to Yellow Corp. was by far the largest provided to any company through the program for businesses critical to national security, and the Treasury Department received a nearly 30 percent equity stake in the company in return for the loan. The loan came after several Democrats and Republicans in Congress wrote letters to the Treasury Department and the Pentagon advocating on Yellow’s behalf. Prior emails released by the coronavirus subcommittee showed that lobbyists for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents Yellow drivers, were also involved in discussions over the loan.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/27/trump-officials-loan-yellow-trucking/