Ethics questions loom over Trump Jr. benefiting financially from Pentagon drone deal

Watch Ethics questions loom over Trump Jr. benefiting financially from Pentagon drone deal - Straight Arrow News on Dailymotion

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00:00A Pentagon awarded contract to a company with close ties to Donald Trump Jr. has led to some

00:05ethical questions. The Pentagon awarded a contract to Florida-based company Unusual Machines to build

00:143,500 drone motors and other parts. Trump Jr. is a major shareholder with that company and will

00:20benefit financially from this deal. The president's son also helped to screen candidates for top jobs

00:26at the Pentagon following his father's election. This is very problematic from an ethics perspective

00:32to have the grown children of the president of the United States entering into contracts with

00:38the Department of Defense without rigorous review of those contracts by independent experts to

00:46determine whether the contract is in the interest of the United States in our national security

00:52and at a fair price. This is very inappropriate unless those precautions have been taken.

01:00Spokespeople for Trump Jr. denied that he reached out to government officials on behalf of Unusual

01:05Machines. Don has never communicated with anyone in the administration on behalf of Unusual Machines

01:12or about the contract in question. His advisory role with them has nothing to do with interfacing

01:18with the government. A spokesperson told the Financial Times, Trump Jr. isn't the first presidential child

01:23dealing with ethics questions. Ethics officials were critical of Joe Biden's son Hunter sitting on the

01:29board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president. It was on a much smaller scale,

01:36but Hunter Biden's involvement in Ukraine at the time that his father was vice president of the United States

01:42handling Ukraine policy for President Obama. That was very, very problematic what was going on there.

01:48For the Trump family, this is not the first ethics issue to arise, including over a cryptocurrency

01:53company founded by Trump and his sons that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:58There are massive amount of campaign contributions coming into this Congress from the crypto industry.

02:04Do you want to apologize to Senator Gillibrand?

02:07That's Painter testifying before the Senate Banking Committee in July over Trump's crypto investments.

02:12This appears to be part of a pattern of President Trump's grown children, Don Jr. and Eric,

02:20and that we also see Jared and Ivanka, now that they're not in the Trump administration,

02:26and others in the Trump family benefiting from official decisions by the president himself

02:35or members of his administration. The Trump family has accumulated billions of dollars of interest

02:41in cryptocurrency that they didn't have just a few years ago.

02:45While there are ethical concerns over deals like this latest drone contract,

02:49there's nothing illegal about it. However, Painter believes Congress should be investigating

02:54and laws should be changed.

02:56This is very, very concerning for our national security, as well as from the vantage point of the

03:02taxpayer. But Congress has a responsibility act and should do so by passing new legislation that

03:08would restrict this kind of thing. For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan.

03:11If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com.