T Alana

A spa and waxing company valued at just $3 million walked away with nearly $40 million in federal Ebola contracts. Months earlier, an investment fund tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had put roughly $30 million into its struggling parent company, XWELL, rescuing it from the edge of bankruptcy. The CDC handed the firm’s XpresTest unit an $18.8 million deal for Ebola screening at American airports. The State Department added $20 million for outbreak response work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in the country has killed more than 5,000 people this year. XpresTest has never worked with Ebola and has never operated overseas. Even its own CEO told ProPublica he is not sure the company can do the job. Experienced organizations like Save the Children and the International Medical Corps were right there, with decades of outbreak response behind them. Instead, the money went to a company whose new contracts quietly boosted the price of its pending sale, a windfall that flows back toward the fund tied to the president’s sons.

Cokey Smurf is all fucked up.

Taxpayers just got stuck with a $93,000 hotel bill so Secret Service agents could stay at two five-star resorts in Marrakech while Ivanka Trump celebrated her 45th birthday in Morocco. And that’s just the rooms. It doesn’t include the agents’ flights, meals, cars or salaries. Federal contracting records dug up by the Daily Mail show a $59,543 contract for the five-star Sofitel Marrakech ahead of a “VVIP” arrival. The next day came a $33,457 contract for a Secret Service team at La Mamounia, a palace hotel where private villas can run more than $8,600 a night. The records don’t name her. But she was the only Secret Service protectee known to be in Morocco at the time, and she was photographed strolling through the old city the day before her birthday. She doesn’t have a government job. She’s the president’s adult daughter on a private birthday getaway, and you’re picking up the tab. Her camp’s defense? A source close to the family said Iran had threatened to kill her, so wouldn’t you want the best protection possible? Nobody’s saying her agents should sleep in a hostel. But nobody made her fly to Marrakech for her birthday either. This family has always treated the Secret Service like a revenue stream. During his first term, Don the Con’s own resorts billed the Secret Service for the rooms its agents stayed in. Now he serves them $30 hotdogs paid for by you. Working families are cutting back at the grocery store, and the Grifter-in-Chief’s daughter is celebrating in a palace on your dime.