On Tuesday night a sweeping dataset of every small business that received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or Economic Injury Disaster (EIDL) loan was released. The program resulted in $700 billion in forgiveable loans.
Properties owned by the Trump Organization and Kushner family profited from the program.
- Over 25 PPP loans were given to businesses with addresses at Trump and Kushner real estate properties, and 15 of those loans reported keeping either one job, zero jobs, or not reporting.
- A $2,164,543 loan to the Triomphe Restaurant Corp., located at Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York City, showed the company reported the money didn’t go to keeping any jobs. It later closed.
- A company called LB City Inc, which is located at Kushner’s Bungalow Hotel in Long Branch, New Jersey, received a loan for $505,552.50 that it used to keep 155 jobs.
- Two tenants at 725 5th Avenue, Trump Tower, received more than $100,000 and only kept three jobs.
- Four tenants at the Kushner-owned 666 5th Avenue combined received more than $204,000, and only retained 6 jobs.
There were also some troubling signs of mismanagement revealed in Tuesday evening’s data release. Over 100 loans were made to companies where no business name was listed, were listed as “no name available” or showed potential data entry errors, such as names that appeared to be dates or phone numbers. More than 300 companies appear each to have gotten more than $10 million in loans through their subsidiaries. Businesses were not supposed to receive more than $10 million per entity, except for those in the food, hospitality or hotels industries.
The response from government watchdog spokesperson:
“Only now — after its hand has been forced, hundreds of thousands of small businesses have gone under, and millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted — has this administration pulled back the curtains to reveal the malpractice going on behind the scenes,” Herrig said. “Americans deserved an open, transparent small business aid program when this pandemic started, and any new small business relief program must take a lesson from the abject failures of this one.”
