Firm Linked to Trump’s Sons Got Nearly $40 Million in Federal Contracts to Screen for Ebola and Other Diseases
The CEO of its parent company, Ezra Ernst, said XpresTest won both contracts in a competitive bidding process and pointed to its years of experience doing screening for COVID-19 and other pathogens at American airports.
Key points
- Justin Lane/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Trump administration awarded a small biosecurity company nearly $40 million to screen for Ebola and other infectious diseases just months after a firm linked to President Donald Trump’s elder sons invested in its parent company, according to records and interviews.
- airports and the other to respond to disease outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are seven times the total value of government contracts the company had directly received before.
- government’s response to a 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, said there are some parallels between monitoring for COVID-19 and Ebola at airports, but he said it’s concerning that the government would award such a lucrative contract to a company that has no experience in Africa.
Other funding went to better-known global aid nonprofits, including International Medical Corps, Save the Children and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, whose awards ranged from $25 million to $35 million.
Additional details
- XpresTest has never worked with Ebola or provided biosecurity services abroad, let alone in the kind of volatile locales it’s now expected to work in.
- to use aid to foreign countries to “promote American companies and American innovations abroad.” This March, the State Department announced it would be giving up to $4.5 billion in funding for various purposes, including responding to infectious disease outbreaks.
- Donald Trump Jr., left, and Eric Trump, right, watch as their father, Donald Trump, center, speaks to members of the media in 2024.
- ” The contracts are the latest example of the president’s family benefiting financially from his administration’s actions.
- But even he acknowledged that working internationally is “a new thing for us” and expressed uncertainty about being able to complete the work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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