Senior White House Adviser and Trump Pal Peter Navarro Pressured the Pentagon Into a $620 Million Contract With a Firm Linked to Donald Trump Jr.

In yet another instance of self-dealing corruption by this administration, the Pentagon has issued a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnet company that the venture capital firm of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, invested in a few months prior. Despite initial denials from the administration, the deal was pushed forward—specifically by Peter Navarro, a Trump senior adviser and friend of the family.

ProPublica has the story:

[I]nterviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly.

After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks, the source said.

“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.

The Trump family’s self-dealing has followed a consistent pattern throughout this administration: a family member acquires a financial interest, the White House exerts pressure on the relevant agency to help produce a personal windfall, and officials scramble to comply. The Vulcan deal is merely the first in which the White House intervention has been documented with this degree of specificity.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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