The Trump administration keeps beefing up its history of awarding big government contracts to inexperienced or outright unqualified companies. Most recently, as the Defense Department awarded $1 billion in contracts for disposable gowns to use as personal protective equipment (PPE) during the coronavirus pandemic, it bypassed a host of companies with successful track records for some … less orthodox providers.
Some of the companies that won big contracts, The New York Times reports, are working with a former NFL linebacker named Bront Bird and with the former arms dealer portrayed by Jonah Hill in War Dogs. The latter, Efraim Diveroli, is banned from federal contracting after having sold prohibited Chinese ammunition to the U.S. military.
But both Bird and Diveroli have been involved with JL Kaya, a company that got a $323 million contract to make up to 85 million disposable medical gowns despite its only previous federal contract having been for $7,296 of gauze.
Another $194 million in contracts went to Health Supply US, a company founded just this year—it obviously doesn’t have a long track record as a federal contractor, but what it does have going for it is that it was founded by a former Trump administration official.
Then there’s Maddox Defense, which is subcontracting for Health Supply US and has $88 million of its own contracts. Like JL Kaya, it’s working with Bird. It’s not clear what qualifies Bird, who has tried to establish himself as a businessman in a few different fields since his 2011 to 2013 stint with the San Diego Chargers, to act as a “technical adviser” on the manufacture of PPE. But it’s the Trump administration. Things don’t need to make sense—or, the sense we can make of them usually involves corruption.