According to a review by American Ledger, the Trump Administration has handed out nearly two billion dollars in federal contracts to untested, unproven, unqualified, and even bizarre firms for the production of essential supplies in the midst of the lethal COVID-19 pandemic.
Several of the businesses receiving these valuable taxpayer-funded contracts have checkered reputations and misadvertised competencies. Many of the deals offered by the Trump Administration were also extended to inexperienced first-time contractors, often with no competition for the contract. Listed below are a few highlights obtained during American Ledger’s review:
- Sweet Shop Candies, Inc., a candy company, was awarded $237,000 to provide face shields to the Indian Health Service, a department within Health and Human Services responsible for providing essential health care to Native American tribes. The company’s qualifications included making chocolate for the past 40 years.
- Over half a billion tax dollars in federal contracts were awarded to ApiJect, a syringe manufacturing firm whose injector is not yet approved by the FDA and does not have a factory. The per-syringe cost was more than double than it was for other similar vendors. The company’s CEO even stated that, “It would be crazy to just rely on us.”
- CRE8AD8, a Texas-based event planner, received $39 million from the Department of Agriculture to create and implement a massive program to deliver food to hundreds of thousands of needy families. The owner had lied about the clients it did business with, and inflated the size of its operation likely to obtain the contract.
- The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded nearly $600,000 to MedStaff Nationwide, a health care recruiting firm, to purchase essential PPE. The firm claimed they would sell PPE, such as masks, which they had no prior experience manufacturing.
- Voyager Medical Supply received over $222,000 to provide PPE supplies. The company was founded in April 2020 and registered at a personal home.
Despite the Trump Administration’s abject failure to rein in the most severe public health crisis America has faced in a century, their awarding of these critical PPE federal contracts marked a stunning new level of incompetence.