Contract violations of public policy? You tell me. See Restatement of Contracts, 2d, Section 178. From The New York Times:
Firm That Planned Trump’s Jan. 6 Rally Received No-Bid Contracts
This administration has given the company, staffed by the president’s allies, multimillion-dollar contracts it was guaranteed to win.
David A. Fahrenthold and Andrea Fuller
David A. Fahrenthold and Andrea Fuller examined federal contracting data showing how often the government circumvents open bidding.
The Trump administration has bypassed regular procedures to award more than $13 million in contracts to the company that helped organize President Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021, repeatedly creating hidden business opportunities that only one firm could win.
Those contracts have transformed Event Strategies Inc., staffed by veterans of Mr. Trump’s campaigns and first White House, from a minor federal contractor into the government’s highest-paid event planner. The firm has arranged celebrations of the Navy’s 250th birthday and a Treasury Department event to tout new savings accounts for children, called “Trump accounts.”
By law, federal agencies are generally supposed to seek competing bids before awarding contracts, to get the best value for taxpayers. Event Strategies won contracts that were particularly lucrative, the kind that other companies say they would have liked to win.
In at least five cases, other firms never got the chance.
Instead, the agencies invoked legal loopholes meant for special situations — instances of urgent need, or cases where only one specialized vendor could do a job — and gave the contracts to Event Strategies.
Of the $22 million in federal contracts that Event Strategies has received since Mr. Trump resumed office, the majority has come through these carve-outs. By contrast, less than 3 percent of the $120 million the Trump administration awarded to other event planners involved similar exemptions, a New York Times analysis of federal contracting data found.
This firm’s special treatment is a stark example of the way that the second Trump administration has used taxpayer money to benefit people close to the president or his top officials.
Mr. Trump ran on the promise of “draining the swamp” of Washington influence-peddling. But in these cases, his agencies seem to have turned off a decades-old system meant to ensure an even playing field.
“Competition allows the government to contract for the best products, the best services, at the best value to the government,” said Jessica Tillipman, an associate dean at the George Washington University Law School and procurement law professor. She said these cases raise “questions about whether or not the agencies have a legitimate basis to sidestep competitive procedures.”
Federal regulations require agencies to award contracts “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.” It is difficult to judge whether these specific contracts ran afoul of those rules, because agencies have given so little detail about them.
Regardless, there can also be political consequences for awarding no-bid contracts. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security used urgency exemptions to justify $220 million in no-bid media contracts that went to companies tied to Kristi Noem, the department’s secretary, and her allies. The controversy over those contracts played a role in Ms. Noem’s downfall: She was fired this month after lawmakers grilled her about the deals.
Event Strategies did not respond to questions about the contracts or Jan. 6. Instead, Tim Unes, its president, issued a statement that touted the company’s years of experience.
“We’re honored to play a role in bringing our nation’s 250th celebration to life,” Mr. Unes said.
The Treasury Department, which provided one of the five contracts to Event Strategies, said it had been working on a “condensed timeline.” The Navy, which provided the other four, defended its decisions by saying that Event Strategies was the “only vendor capable of executing the requirement within the necessary time frame.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Davis Ingle, said in a statement that the White House was not involved in the awarding of these contracts.
“There is a standard federal process, and the White House expects all agencies to comply with it,” Mr. Ingle said in a statement.
Viral Stunts
Event Strategies, based in Northern Virginia, was founded 26 years ago by veterans of Washington’s “advance” industry, who arrange events where politicians will speak. Some details of its recent federal contracts were first reported by Wired.
Mr. Trump has used Event Strategies since the start of his political career. The company organized his 2015 presidential campaign kickoff at Trump Tower, and has received more than $67 million from political committees supporting the president since then, public filings show.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the firm handled logistics for the rally on the Ellipse, at which Mr. Trump urged supporters to march on the Capitol, where they sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Because of the firm’s role, Mr. Unes lost a volunteer role helping to plan memorial events in Washington for former Senator Bob Dole in late 2021.
No one at the firm was charged with wrongdoing.
Justin Caporale, one of the firm’s partners — a former Trump campaign advance staff member and aide to Melania Trump, the first lady — told congressional investigators that the attack on the Capitol was “a disgusting display that should’ve never happened.”
After that, he and his firm went back to work for Mr. Trump. During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Caporale helped arrange appearances designed to attract social media attention, in which Mr. Trump drove a garbage truck and worked a McDonald’s drive-through.
When Mr. Trump was re-elected, he wrote on his Truth Social network that he was rewarding Mr. Caporale with an unusual role as the White House’s “Executive Producer for Major Events and Public Appearances.”
“Congratulations Justin,” Mr. Trump said. “Keep up the GREAT work!”
But Mr. Caporale is not on the government’s payroll. He remained at Event Strategies.
A Surge in Business
Before last year, public databases show Event Strategies was paid just $186,000 for federal contracts during Mr. Trump’s first term, and nothing under President Biden.
Last September, its fortunes began to change.
The firm enrolled with the government as a preapproved contractor. Agencies routinely use this system to purchase common commercial goods and services without having to run the process from scratch, sharing opportunities among the authorized vendors and allowing them to decide whether to bid.
It was akin to a restaurant getting its menu onto the DoorDash app. Now, agencies could easily buy the company’s services, but there was no guarantee that they would. After all, there are more than 200 other event planners in the system.
Within a month, however, the firm landed millions of dollars in Navy contracts.
In late September, the Navy awarded Event Strategies a $189,000 contract to help organize a country music concert and cookout in Virginia Beach, Va., to celebrate the service’s 250th birthday. The next week, the Navy gave it two more contracts, for $5.2 million each, on back-to-back days. The firm was paid to provide services for a larger celebration in nearby Norfolk, Va., called “Titans of the Sea,” which featured flyovers, missile demonstrations and a presidential keynote.
Then, the next month, the Navy gave the firm a fourth contract, for $2.1 million, to plan events connected to the 250th anniversary in Annapolis, Md.
In a departure from standard practice, those contracts were offered to Event Strategies alone.
In three cases, the Navy designated the contracts as “only one source,” invoking an exemption meant for rare circumstances, such as when only one company provides a certain service or has unique or superior equipment. In the fourth case, it used a slightly different single-source exemption so rarely cited that it had never before been applied to event planning.
A Navy spokeswoman said that Event Strategies already had relevant experience, after working for two nonprofit groups planning celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday — America250, run by a bipartisan commission, and Freedom 250, run by Mr. Trump’s allies. As part of its work with America250, the firm had planned a military parade to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday.
The firm “possessed the institutional knowledge, production infrastructure, and operational readiness required to rapidly deliver the full scope of services for the Navy and Marine Corps 250th celebrations,” the spokeswoman said. She said the Navy had been facing a “compressed timeline,” but declined to say why.
Public documents provide few details about what the firm did for the events, or the amounts it charged for labor and equipment, making it difficult to determine if Event Strategies charged a fair price.
But other event-planning vendors said there was an easy way to determine if somebody else could do the job better or cheaper: Let other companies bid against them.
Towan Isom, whose firm Isom Events LLC has held contracts under both Democratic and Republican administrations, called it a lost opportunity. “You can be prepared, but how can you get to the next level if the access to the opportunity isn’t equitable?” she said.
In January, procurement documents indicate that the Treasury Department again bypassed normal procedures to give a contractto Event Strategies.
The department paid the firm $740,000 to provide food, beverages and audio-visual services at a “kickoff” for the Trump accounts, which had been created six months earlier by Congress. The event, held in an auditorium in Washington, included speeches by Mr. Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as an onstage interview where the rapper Nicki Minaj praised the accounts.
In giving the contract to Event Strategies, the Treasury Department cited another rarely used loophole, meant for urgent needs that leave no time for the usual solicitation of bids.
Event Strategies was hired on Jan. 27, a day before the event, contracting data show. It is unclear why the Treasury would wait until the day before to hire a vendor to run such a large and expensive event. The agency had signed a contract to pay the catering company that manages the venue on Jan. 15.
It was the first time that the Treasury had used the urgency exemption to justify a contract to a company registered as an event planner or conference organizer, a Times analysis of roughly two decades of publicly available contracting data found.
The Treasury Department did not respond to detailed questions about the event, or explain what caused the event to be planned on a “condensed timeline.” Instead, the department issued a brief statement saying it “adheres to all standard processes and procedures for federal contracting and procurement.”
Lorna Tedder, a retired contracting expert who spent 31 years at the Defense Department, said that the exemption for urgency is typically used in dire cases, like supplying weapons to Special Operations units.
“Usually, I see it in wartime situations, or we’re going to lose a lot of money, or somebody’s going to die,” said Ms. Tedder, who left government in 2018 and then wrote a blog about contracting. “It’s not meant to be a shortcut.”
Ms. Tedder said she had once used the urgency exemption to hire a vendor for an event, but under vastly different circumstances than the Treasury Department gathering. She had to arrange an in-person meeting in wartime for a group of generals who needed to meet later that day.
“That right there is urgent,” she said. “I don’t see how this could be urgent.”
Event Strategies has also received about $9 million in other federal contracts since Mr. Trump returned to office last January.
In two cases, it actually had competition. The firm won a $279,000 contract from the General Services Administration to decorate buildings for America’s 250th and a $3.7 million contract from the State Department for “event support” in Doral, Fla. — where Mr. Trump will host a Group of 20 summit at his golf resort later this year.
Both times, records show the company beat out one other unnamed bidder. In several other cases, agencies reported that they had set up a “full and open competition” — for either small businesses or a larger pool — but that only Event Strategies had participated.
Among those was an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to provide ongoing digital media services that has already yielded the company $4.4 million.
The State Department and Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions about how they publicized those deals. The General Services Administration said it had “complied with all requirements and regulations,” but did not give more details.
Alex Klavens contributed reporting.
David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
Andrea Fuller is a data journalist at The Times, using data analysis to make sense of complex topics.
No comments:
Post a Comment