Company Connected to Pelosi’s Husband Scored Coronavirus Bailout

A company connected to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband received a loan from the Trump administration’s $669 billion Paycheck Protection Program, a Small Business Administration-led fund designed to provide financial relief to businesses in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

Bloomberg News first reported:

Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman described Paul Pelosi as an investor in the firm, which turned up in loan-level disclosures for the program that were released Monday by the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration. […]

EDI Associates is listed as a recipient of a loan between $350,000 and $1 million. The same company was listed in Nancy Pelosi’s latest House financial disclosure report filed in May 2019, for the year 2018.  […]

EDI Associates is listed in Pelosi’s disclosure form as located in Sonoma, California. It’s identified as a limited partnership with an investment in the El Dorado Hotel. The value of the asset on the form — identified as belonging to Pelosi’s spouse — is listed as between $250,001 and $500,000.

“He’s an investor. So, he was not aware the loan was applied for,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement to the business news outlet.

The revelation comes after Pelosi criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the PPP program.

The Trump administration’s concealment of PPP loan data was a disturbing sign of its complete indifference to ensuring that Paycheck Protection Program funds go first and foremost to the most vulnerable small businesses on Main Street. Its reversal is an overdue step toward securing the transparency needed to ensure struggling small businesses, particularly minority, women and veteran-owned businesses, are getting the vital assistance they need to survive and retain their workers.

The government on Monday identified roughly 650,000 mostly small businesses and nonprofits that received taxpayer money from a program that likely helped prevent the job market meltdown from growing worse but that also benefited some politically connected firms.

Recipients covered a broad swath of industries, with some that were less directly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, such as manufacturing and construction, receiving a greater proportion of the loans than the hard-hit restaurant, bar, and hotel industries. Many law firms and private equity companies also obtained loans.

Businesses owned by politicians also borrowed from the Treasury Department’s Payroll Protection Program, including a minor league baseball team owned by the family of the governor of Ohio. A large franchisee of Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut restaurants, whose CEO is a major donor to President Donald Trump, received loans totaling between $15 and $30 million.

The program launched April 3 and as of June 30 had handed out $521 billion. Treasury identified just a fraction of the total borrowers Monday, naming only those companies that got more than $150,000. Those firms made up less than 15% of the nearly five million small companies and organizations that received loans.

Economists generally credit the program with helping prevent the job market meltdown from being much worse. Employers added 7.5 million jobs in May and June, a solid increase though it left the economy with nearly 15 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. The PPP probably drove some of that gain.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.