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war profiteering
Top Oversight Democrat Pushes Pentagon Watchdog to Probe 'Shady' Trump Family Contracts
Asking for an investigation, Rep. Robert Garcia noted that the Department of Defense “repeatedly awarded lucrative DOD contracts to companies after they became affiliated with the president’s sons.”
May 08, 2026
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is urging the watchdog overseeing the Pentagon to investigate "shady" defense contracts that may have benefited the family of President Donald Trump.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, sent a letter on Friday to the Department of Defense inspector general, Platte B. Moring III, calling for an investigation after the administration "repeatedly awarded lucrative DOD contracts to companies after they became affiliated with the president’s sons," Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
"While Trump’s illegal war in Iran is driving up gas and grocery bills for working families, his sons are cashing in on defense contracts funded by hardworking taxpayers," Garcia said.
He pointed to a contract awarded last week for the Air Force to buy an undisclosed number of interceptor drones from the West Palm Beach-based company Powerus, drones that Bloomberg reported have never been used in combat. The company has not disclosed the terms of the deal or the size of the contract.
But the deal instantly raised eyebrows, given that just a month before, the Trump sons were brought on board as Powerus investors after a golf course company they backed, Aureus Greenway Holdings, announced plans to merge with the drone manufacturer.
The Guardian reported that the company had pushed hard for its technology to be sold to Persian Gulf countries facing attacks from Iran in retaliation for the war that the elder Trump started. “These countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the president so he will do what they want,” Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told the paper.
Garcia also pointed to a $24 million contract awarded last month to Foundation Future Industries, a company that produces humanoid robots designed to participate in warfare. Similarly, just a month before the lucrative contract was announced, Eric Trump became chief strategy adviser for Foundation Future after previously investing in the company.
"Since the start of President Trump’s second term, his adult children have started conspicuously involving themselves in a variety of defense-related contracting firms with specialties including rockets, robots, martial arts, and drones," Garcia wrote. "These new engagements come despite little history of the Trump family working in those sectors prior to January 2025. Many of these firms have then received grants, loans, and contracts following the Trump family involvement, raising questions about the ability of these firms to fulfill their obligations."
"Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.’s purchases, consultancies, and advisory roles create an unprecedented intertwining of President Trump’s personal financial interests with US policy and national security," Garcia continued. "Each new venture opens new opportunities to direct DOD funds to the first family’s pockets, and the Trump Administration appears to be taking advantage of those opportunities."
The weapons contracts are part of a much larger pattern of the Trump children being put in positions to profit from administration contracts.
The Financial Times reported in December that during the first year of Trump's presidency, his administration awarded more than $735 million in contracts to companies in the portfolio of 1789 Capital, a fund created by pro-Trump donors that Donald Trump Jr. joined in 2024.
Trump Jr. said last year that he and the 1789 firm "understand what the administration wants to do, because we helped craft some of that messaging," which Garcia described in Friday's letter as an admission "that the Trump family is using insider information for its own business interests."
Democrats in Congress have repeatedly demanded answers from the Defense Department about its processes for preventing self-dealing by Trump's sons and others with ties to the president.
In response to a letter sent in January by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the Defense Department said in March that its primary method of mitigating conflicts of interest is "through the diligent collection and review of financial disclosure forms for employees."
Garcia said that "this does not prevent Trump administration officials from directing taxpayer dollars with the purpose of enriching the Trump family, nor does it prevent the Trump family from profiting from insider knowledge of future Pentagon plans."
Noting the nearly $2.5 billion it has raked in through cryptocurrency and other digital investments, according to an estimate by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, Garcia said that "given this pattern of using the presidency for personal grift, the Trump family’s ventures into defense contracting are all the more alarming."
Garcia requested that the department open an investigation into what safeguards exist to prevent self-dealing by the Trump family and to disclose what contracts it currently has with companies tied to them and how they were evaluated for potential conflicts of interest.
He said, "The American people deserve to know that DOD awards contracts of taxpayer dollars ethically and prioritizes the best solutions for our national security—not who can pay the Trump family more."
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'Obscene Transfer of Wealth' Continues as Another Oil Giant Posts Massive War-Fueled Profits
"The war enriches shareholders as it impoverishes citizens," said a campaigner with 350.org.
Apr 29, 2026
France-based TotalEnergies on Wednesday became the latest fossil fuel giant to report massive profits juiced by the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has sent global oil prices surging and jacked up costs for consumers.
TotalEnergies announced in its first-quarter earnings report that it would increase returns to shareholders through a higher dividend and stock buybacks after seeing $5.8 billion in profits and $8.6 billion in cash flow during the first three months of 2026. The company attributed its profit growth to its "ability to capture price upside," corporate-speak for cashing in as consumers face rising energy costs.
“While families watch their bills skyrocket, TotalEnergies posts some of its best financial results without even paying its fair share of taxes," said Fanny Petitbon, France country manager at the environmental group 350.org. "We are witnessing an obscene transfer of wealth: The war enriches shareholders as it impoverishes citizens."
"We demand that France stop yielding to oil lobbyists and introduce, without delay, a permanent and ambitious tax on fossil fuel profits," Petitbon added. "Every day of inaction is a deliberate political choice in favor of shareholders and against citizens.”
TotalEnergies' report came a day after the British oil giant BP reported that its profits more than doubled compared to the first quarter of last year.
In an analysis released over the weekend, Oxfam projected that six of the world's largest fossil fuel companies—including BP and TotalEnergies—will rake in $2,967 in profits per second this year, an increase of roughly $37 million per day compared to last year.
"Families around the world continue to be pushed into energy poverty as geopolitical instability, the impacts of escalating violence in the Middle East that has already taken many lives, and the sharp increase in the wealth of the super-rich in contrast to everyone else are leaving ordinary people struggling to make ends meet," said Oxfam.
350.org warned earlier this week that energy market disruptions caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran could hit households, businesses, and governments around the world with more than $1 trillion in extra costs.
“It is a staggering injustice that fossil fuel corporations are once again posting record-breaking profits while families struggle to keep the lights on," said Rukiya Khamis, 350.org's East Africa country manager. "Right now, power is concentrated in the hands of those who thrive on crisis and scarcity."
"It’s time to end our forced dependence on fossil fuels, tax the profiteers who benefit from our hardship, and redirect that wealth into building a fair, clean energy system," Khamis said. "We aren’t just asking for a lower bill; we are demanding a system that values human dignity over corporate greed."
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Warren Leads Demand for Probe Into Hegseth's Reported Efforts to Profit From Iran War
Democratic lawmakers said if reports of Hegseth attempting to buy defense stock weeks before the war are true, it "would be a profound conflict of interest" and a "betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war."
Apr 02, 2026
Senate Democrats are pushing for an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a report that he attempted to make a “big investment” in weapons stock just weeks before President Donald Trump launched an aggressive war against Iran.
Three Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee—Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were joined by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley to send Hegseth a letter on Wednesday.
They told the secretary that his reported attempt to broker the deal "would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement—and betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm’s way."
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.”
However, the purchase was reportedly never made because the massive bundle of stocks was not available to Morgan Stanley clients at the time.
A Pentagon spokesperson has also denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and claiming that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives ever approached BlackRock.
But, as the lawmakers noted, FT reported that the inquiry was significant enough for BlackRock to flag it internally.
Hegseth and other Pentagon officials confirmed by the Senate are prohibited by law from owning or purchasing publicly traded stock in the 10 companies that have received the largest Defense Department contracts over the past five years.
But the fund held stocks in several of these companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.
Reports of the proposed deal by Hegseth's broker come as the Trump administration has faced other accusations of trading on insider information about the president’s next moves to win big on prediction market services. Platforms like Polymarket have seen bettors take home monster winnings by placing wagers predicting major military actions in Venezuela and Iran just hours before Trump launched them.
The lawmakers noted that while the war is costing American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day and has saddled Americans with soaring gas prices, it has proven highly lucrative for major defense contractors, whose stocks jumped significantly in the days after the war was launched, even as the rest of the market took a tumble.
The Trump administration is currently demanding another $200 billion to prosecute the war on top of a $1.5 trillion budget request to fund the Defense Department, which the lawmakers said would likely result in these companies’ profits and stock prices continuing to climb.
The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched on February 28, has been condemned as illegal by many international law experts and human rights groups, who have accused the US of violating the UN Charter and committing war crimes.
According to a report on Wednesday from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, more than 1,600 civilians have been killed since the war began, including 244 children. At least 13 US troops have also been killed since the conflict broke out.
The lawmakers told Hegseth regarding his reported investment attempt: “If this report is accurate, it would appear to represent an appalling effort to profit off of your knowledge of the president’s plans for war.”
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