This story has been updated to correct inaccurate information provided by the Defense Department and with comments from both the Pentagon and Liberty University.
Just months after President Donald Trump took office, the federal government re-upped a contract to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jet fuel from a university run by one of the president’s top political supporters.
The Pentagon’s energy procurement arm inked the deal, worth nearly $900,000, with a company called Freedom Aviation on May 9, 2017, and has purchased more than $400,000 in turbine fuel from the company since then. Freedom Aviation is wholly owned by Liberty University, a conservative school in Lynchburg, Virginia, led by high-profile Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr.
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Freedom Aviation owns six planes, according to Federal Aviation Administration records, and maintains them at a Lynchburg hanger for Liberty’s popular flight school. It also provides charter flights to the general public, and Falwell has used the aircraft for travel involving his personal, business, and political affairs.
The Defense Logistics Agency, the agency that actually buys the fuel, said that Freedom Aviation was hired to refuel DOD aircraft at the Lynchburg airport, where it's the sole “fixed-base operator,” and that it “submitted the only offer” for those services. Its per-gallon rate, $2.69, ”was determined fair and reasonable in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and was in line with prices at other airports in the region,” according to DLA spokesman Patrick Mackin.
Mackin initially told The Daily Beast that DLA “had not done business with Freedom Aviation in the past.” But after publication, he sent another email saying that the company, going by a different, defunct name—Aviation Resources—had in fact previously won DOD refueling contracts. Those purchases were made from the 1990s up through the spring of 2017 when the name of the aviation company appears to have changed.
Liberty did not respond to questions about the contract before publication. More than 33 hours after first being asked to comment, a lawyer for the university finally did send a letter. The letter confirmed the Pentagon’s revised statement and accused the Daily Beast of painting a false “picture of an unqualified federal contractor awarded a military supply contract based on the political connection” for reporting consistent with the Pentagon’s initial statement.
“The contract to provide the U.S. Department of Defense with fuel at the Lynchburg Regional Airport had been in place for over 20 years,” wrote David Corry, the school’s general counsel. “The term of the contract signed in June 2017 actually began in August of 2016 and was merely a renewal of the pre-existing contract.”
Falwell, whose father was a prominent evangelical leader, remains one of the president’s most committed backers in the conservative Christian community. And Trump has reciprocated that support. Just four days after the Pentagon inked its contract with Freedom Aviation, the president gave the commencement address at Liberty University.
Falwell also appears to have used Freedom Aviation in service of the Trump campaign. He officially endorsed Trump in late January 2016, and joined him at a rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, a day before the state’s crucial Republican presidential caucus. About a week later, the Trump campaign paid Freedom Aviation more than $19,000 for air travel expenses.
RIght to Rise, a super PAC supporting 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, also paid Freedom Aviation the year before, writing the company a $2,000 check on May 11, 2015. That was two days after Bush, who had not yet declared his candidacy, gave that year’s commencement speech at Liberty.
Falwell has acknowledged using university-owned planes for personal and business travel in Liberty’s annual tax filings.
