Oscar Health, a company co-founded by Jared Kushner’s brother and which Kushner himself had previously invested in, worked on developing a coronavirus testing website for the federal government that has raised serious ethics questions. The project has since been scrapped, but given the ties to Kushner and the secrecy and lack of transparency around the collaboration, the public deserves answers about how the project came to be. Kushner has also received sharp backlash for his shadow coronavirus-response task force which seems to have broken two laws.

CREW has requested communications between HHS officials and Oscar Health.

The requested records will show the extent to which the Trump administration is giving preferential treatment to Trump’s own family members and personal interests over the public good. Trump’s pattern of biasing procurement processes towards benefiting himself, his family, and business partners is explicit in this case, and the public deserves to know to what extent the Trump administration is violating ethics laws, potentially at the expense of public health. In fact, Trump’s response to dealing with the coronavirus has largely looked like another excuse to force through his own political agenda, whether it’s advancing his anti-asylum agenda over fact-based research, relaxing pollution rules amidst a public health crisis, or influencing the distribution of essential supplies to preferred states. Trump’s corruption should never have a place in government, and given the ongoing coronavirus crisis, it’s more urgent than ever for the public to know just how many ethics and conflicts of interest rules the Trump administration is willing to violate. 

Read the request here.

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