JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A new investigation by ProPublica reports that the White House asked the Pentagon to give a $620 million loan to a company with ties to President Trump's oldest son. The investigation is based on interviews with Pentagon officials and reviews of Defense Department documents. The company in question is Vulcan Elements. It makes rare earth magnets for drones and satellites, and Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm took a stake in the company three months before the Pentagon announced this deal. ProPublica reports that the deal came at the request of Peter Navarro, a White House adviser and friend of Donald Trump, Jr. Robert Faturechi investigated this deal and is with us now. Welcome to the program.
ROBERT FATURECHI: Thank you for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. OK. So when the Pentagon announced this deal in November, you write that - and I'm quoting here - "defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism." When did you start to hear otherwise?
FATURECHI: So my story was based on Pentagon records and sources, both within the Pentagon and outside of the Pentagon who have familiarity with this office, the Office of Strategic Capital. What that office does is invest and lend to companies that will wrest control of critical mineral supply chains from China back to the U.S., which is a bipartisan concern. What we found is that, in this case, the White House intervened and specifically asked that office to give this record-setting loan to a company that Donald Trump Jr.'s firm had invested in just three months prior.
SUMMERS: Can you give us any more details about the types of people you were talking to, the types of documents that you reviewed that convinced you that White House adviser Peter Navarro had a hand in all of this?
FATURECHI: Yeah. I mean, I have to be limited in what I say about that...
SUMMERS: Sure.
FATURECHI: ...But the records we reviewed are quite explicit. And it's not just that, you know, a White House adviser pushed this company. Our reporting also found that of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan - this company that Don Jr.'s firm had just invested in - was the only deal that was initiated by a top aid to the president.
SUMMERS: Got it. OK. I know that you reached out to both the White House and Peter Navarro, the White House adviser, about all of this. What did they tell you?
FATURECHI: So they denied that, you know, Don Jr. played any role in this deal, that there was any political favoritism. They say that this was an entirely merit-based process.
SUMMERS: And what about the company, Vulcan Elements, the Pentagon, Donald Trump Jr. - did they have any further explanation?
FATURECHI: Exactly that, right? They're saying that Don Jr. had no role in this, that the Defense Department, you know, made a choice based on merits, that there wasn't any political favoritism. But what our reporting found is that when the call came in from the White House, Pentagon staff were asked to move at an unusually rapid speed. The staff were working late nights with little sleep to get this loan done in a matter of weeks, which, for the Office of Strategic Capital, is quite fast. Usually, these deals are deliberated for months. The quote from one of the people involved that I spoke to was the call came from the White House. We have to get this done.
SUMMERS: OK. I do want to ask you a bit more about the Office of Strategic Capital, which was a Pentagon division started under former President Biden, actually, which funds private businesses to reduce U.S. reliance on China for critical minerals and military technology. Do you have a sense of how that office has changed in the second Trump administration?
FATURECHI: Yeah. Absolutely. So they have put more of the focus on critical minerals but, more significantly, the total lending authority has been supersized. They went from about 1 billion to about 200 billion. So they are looking to make deals aggressively. They have a lot of money to work with. They've also brought in former Wall Street executives who are real deals people, is what I've been told by people who are familiar with the office. So they are trying to move fast, and the Biden administration set up the office to sort of have an open application process. The current leadership is much more so using their own personal networks to select companies.
FATURECHI: Your piece says that Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm took a stake of undisclosed size in Vulcan Elements. So we don't know exactly how much they invested, but what happened to Vulcan's valuation once the deal was announced?
FATURECHI: So in the months - you know, if you look at the estimated valuations around the time that Don Jr.'s firm invested to around, you know, the months after the government made this massive financial commitment, we're talking about a tenfold increase. So that's quite a win for Don Jr.'s venture capital firm.
SUMMERS: Yeah. And we've got just a minute left here, Robert. You write in the piece that the deal is one of many actions by the Trump administration that have helped companies in which the Trump family hold stakes. So just to end on here, give us the wider picture. How does this Vulcan Elements deal fit in with others that you've seen?
FATURECHI: So there have been other benefits and other contracts that have gone to firms that Trump family members either own a stake in or have a role in. This was actually the first instance of a contract given out by a federal agency that was traced back to the White House itself. And we also learned that there may be more good news on the way for Don Jr. Among the companies under review for another loan from the Office of Strategic Capital is a drone parts manufacturer that Trump Jr. advises and owns a multimillion dollar stake in.
SUMMERS: Robert Faturechi, reporter for ProPublica, thanks so much for talking to us.
FATURECHI: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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