Trump admin funds plasma company based in owner's condo (AP)

[dalton99a]

https://hosted.ap.org/article/5990d2ac718bc26070e72ce55bc712f8/trump-admin-funds-plasma-company-based-owners-condo

Nov. 1, 2020 8:14 AM EST
Trump admin funds plasma company based in owner's condo
By RICHARD LARDNER and JASON DEAREN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Trump administration gave a well-connected Republican donor seed money to test a possible COVID-19-fighting blood plasma technology, it noted the company’s “manufacturing facilities” in Charleston, South Carolina.

Plasma Technologies LLC is indeed based in the stately waterfront city. But there are no manufacturing facilities. Instead, the company exists within the luxury condo of its majority owner, Eugene Zurlo.

Zurlo's company may be in line for as much as $65 million in taxpayer dollars; enough to start building an actual production plant, according to internal government records and other documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The story of how a tiny business that exists only on paper has managed to snare attention from the highest reaches of the U.S. military and government is emblematic of the Trump administration’s frenetic response to the coronavirus pandemic.

It's also another in a series of contracts awarded to people with close political ties to key officials despite concerns voiced by government scientists. Among the others: an ill-conceived $21 million study of Pepcid as a COVID therapy and more than a half billion dollars to ApiJect Systems America, a startup with an unapproved medicine injection technology and no factory to manufacture the devices.

In addition, a government whistleblower claimed that a $1.6 billion vaccine contract to Novavax Inc. was made over objections of scientific staff.



This photo shows the outside of a Charleston, S.C., condominium belonging to Eugene Zurlo on Monday, Oct. 19, 2020. The Trump administration recently gave the longtime Republican political donor seed money to test a possible COVID-19-fighting blood plasma technology, noting Zurlo's "manufacturing facilities" in Charleston. An AP investigation found no manufacturing facilities. The company operates out of Zurlo's condo. He and his partners may now be in line for as much as $65 million in taxpayer money. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

[dameatball]

1. sick.....and.....tired. Please hurry January.

[pandr32]

2. "A tiny business that exists only on paper"