J. David McSwane, an investigative reporter at ProPublica, knew that the federal government’s pandemic response programs would be a magnet for grifters. But even he was surprised by just how bad things got.
McSwane did a deep dive for his new book Pandemic, Inc., and says the two words he uses most to describe how the Trump administration handled PPE contracts are “chaotic” and “dysfunctional.” He easily discovered some of the taxpayer money was going to “known criminals.”
“We're checking out all these contractors and I would spend about a minute looking into one company and realize, well, they have a history of fraud or they got incorporated on Monday and got a contract on Wednesday. There really was no vetting. These contracts were given out indiscriminately. If you had connections to the Trump White House, you stood a pretty good chance of getting a deal,” he says on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal podcast.
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“I knew from the outset of the CARES Act that people were gonna take advantage of these programs. So just sort of instinctively, I knew to look at it,” however, he adds, “I have to admit, I came out more disillusioned than I thought the federal government was so woefully unprepared.”
He says “it truly was a mess.”
The fraud happened on the local level, too.
“FEMA gave a contract to a company, and I detailed this in the book, something like 10 million to deliver COVID-19 test kits to all 50 states and territories. And we started to look at it and this company had no background in the medical equipment space whatsoever,” he says. Not only that, but this “vendor” gave FEMA contaminated test kits that the government did accept—and pay them for.
There are lessons to learn from this and McSwane details them in this episode—along with a fun segment in which co-hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast listen and respond to the wildest GOP clips from this week.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
