Trump's Trials - White House asked Pentagon to loan money to a company linked to Trump's oldest son

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

A new investigation by ProPublica reports that the White House asked the Pentagon to give a $620 million dollar 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.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's Trump's terms from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Every episode, we bring you a story from NPR's recent coverage of the 47th president with a focus on ways he's using power like no president before him. Here is the latest from NPR. I'm Juana Summers. A new investigation by ProPublica reports that the White House asked the Pentagon to give a $620 million loan to accompany 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 advisor and friend of Donald Trump Jr. Robert Fatterichie investigated this deal and is with us now. program. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. Okay. 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?

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 rest 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. 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 advisor Peter Navarro had a hand in all of this? Yeah, I mean, I have to be limited in what I say about that, but the records we reviewed are quite explicit.

And it's not just that, you know, White House advisor 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 aide to the president. Got it. Okay. I know that you reached out to both the White House and Peter Navarro, the White House advisor, about all of this, what did they tell you? 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. And what about the company Vulcan Elements, the Pentagon, Donald Trump Jr. Did they have any further explanation?

Exactly that, right? They're saying that Don Jr. had no role in this, that the Defense Department 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. 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? 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. 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. Earpice says that Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm took a stake of undisclosed size and Vulcan elements. So we don't know exactly

how much they invested, but what happened to Vulcan's valuation once the deal was announced? 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 Junior's venture capital firm. Yeah, 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 holds 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?

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 roll 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 multi-million dollar stake in. Robert Fatteratchi, reporter for ProPublica, thanks so much for talking to us. Thank you for having me.

Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.