WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional monitor of federal pandemic support is elevating the potential of a hyperlink between President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a $700 million aid mortgage to a struggling trucking firm.

Bharat Ramamurti, a Democratic member of the four-person Congressional Oversight Fee, raised the potential Kushner connection at a listening to Thursday, as panel members from each events challenged the Treasury Division’s determination to award the mortgage to YRC Worldwide. The taxpayer-funded mortgage was made on the grounds that the corporate’s operations are important for sustaining nationwide safety.

The panel members questioned the choice to deem YRC’s enterprise important to nationwide safety. It was the primary and by far the biggest mortgage made underneath the nationwide safety portion of the Treasury Division’s company support program, which has loaned billions to main airways and smaller air carriers.

YRC obtained a separate $600 million mortgage final 12 months from Apollo World Administration and several other different lenders that was organized by Apollo, an enormous personal fairness agency that’s YRC’s largest creditor, in keeping with the oversight panel. Apollo co-founder Joshua Harris suggested the Trump administration on infrastructure coverage in early 2017 and met with Kushner, who’s an adviser to the president. Later that 12 months Apollo lent $184 million to Kushner’s household actual property firm to assist refinance its mortgage on a Chicago constructing, in keeping with a New York Occasions report cited by Ramamurti.

Ramamurti requested Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin whether or not he had had contacts with Kushner or his employees relating to the YRC mortgage. Mnuchin stated he had not. Ramamurti then broadened the query to a request for correspondence with anybody within the White Home.

“This warrants additional investigation,” Ramamurti stated. He referred to as the mortgage to YRC “a fast-tracked, extraordinarily beneficiant mortgage that simply so occurred to assist” Apollo as YRC’s creditor.

There was no rapid touch upon the matter to The Related Press from Kushner or his employees.

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“Apollo was not concerned in any respect in (YRC’s) determination to hunt the Treasury funds,” Apollo spokesperson Joanna Rose stated Thursday. “We’re a capital supplier for hundreds of corporations. We’re one in all many lenders to YRC. This isn’t an organization that our funds personal or management.”

The congressional displays discovered that taxpayers might be vulnerable to shedding cash on the $700 million funding. YRC has had monetary issues for years, nicely earlier than the onset of the pandemic, and has been vulnerable to chapter.

Mnuchin defended the mortgage, saying that YRC meets the standards for corporations deemed important for nationwide safety because the Treasury Division had labored out with the Protection Division and the Workplace of Director of Nationwide Intelligence.

He acknowledged that taxpayers may find yourself shedding the cash if YRC fails and doesn’t pay it again. “This was a dangerous mortgage,” Mnuchin stated, however he added, “We’ve been lucky that the economic system recovered. … In the end Treasury and the taxpayers shall be very nicely compensated.”

Mnuchin famous that, earlier than the mortgage was authorised this summer season, a number of lawmakers had requested the Treasury Division to assist YRC with the intention to save jobs.

Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., a member of the panel who’s a former banker, instructed Mnuchin, “Have been I nonetheless in finance, I’d not have made this mortgage.”

YRC, primarily based in Overland Park, Kansas, gives transportation and logistics providers, resembling delivering meals, electronics and different provides to navy places across the nation. The Protection Division is a serious YRC shopper, and it’s the main transportation supplier to the Division of Homeland Safety.

The nationwide safety portion of Treasury’s company support program, with an out there pot of as much as $17 billion, had been anticipated earlier this 12 months to be earmarked for hard-pressed plane maker Boeing or for Basic Electrical. They have been in a position to faucet the personal credit score markets and didn’t search authorities support.

To qualify for the nationwide safety support, corporations must be performing underneath protection contracts of the very best nationwide precedence or working underneath top-secret safety clearance. YRC apparently didn’t meet both of the standards however certified underneath a “catchall” provision permitting a advice and certification from the secretary of protection or the director of nationwide intelligence to be adequate.

The four-member oversight fee was appointed by congressional leaders of each events to watch the spending of some $2 trillion in financial support enacted by Congress final spring and directed by the Treasury Division and the Federal Reserve.