A spa and waxing company valued at just $3 million won federal Ebola screening deals worth nearly $40 million, months after a fund tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump rescued it from the edge of bankruptcy.
The Trump administration awarded nearly $40 million in contracts to screen for Ebola and other infectious diseases to XpresTest, a small biosecurity firm whose parent company had been bought into by an investment fund linked to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump just months earlier, according to a ProPublica investigation published Monday by reporters Sharon Lerner, Anna Maria Barry-Jester, and Robert Faturechi.
The money came in two pieces according to Propublica. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded XpresTest an $18.8 million contract in June for Ebola entry screening at American airports. The State Department followed with a $20 million award under its America First Global Health Strategy for outbreak response work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the company also plans operations in Kenya and Morocco. Together, the deals are worth roughly seven times everything XpresTest had directly received from the federal government before.
The company has never worked with Ebola and has never provided biosecurity services overseas. Its parent company, XWELL, started life in 2006 as an airport spa chain, and most of its revenue last year came from waxing salons and airport spas. Even the man running it sounds unsure the company can deliver. Discussing the Congo work, XWELL CEO Ezra Ernst told ProPublica, “This is a risky contract. I’m not sure we can do it.”
The Investment Came First, The Contracts Followed
The timeline is suspect at best. After their father won reelection, Dominari Holdings, a small financial firm with offices inside Trump Tower, brought Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump on as advisers and gave them a stake of more than 10% in the firm. Dominari launched an investment fund called American Ventures, and in February of this year that fund put roughly $30 million into XWELL.
At the time, XWELL was valued at about $3 million and, by its own CEO’s account, was losing money and running out of cash. The fund’s investment bought roughly a 10% stake, with an option to pick up millions of additional shares later. One month before the money arrived, XWELL had hired a former senior CDC adviser who built the agency’s traveler surveillance program.
Four months after the investment, the CDC contract landed. The State Department award followed, with the Congo work beginning in September. XWELL never announced either contract publicly; they surfaced only through federal contracting disclosures.
Experienced Aid Groups Were Available For This Work
The stakes of handing this work to a novice could not be higher. Congo is battling an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain declared in May that has killed more than 5,000 people this year, an outbreak the World Health Organization has called the largest ever recorded in the country, and the federal government’s screening programs exist to keep the virus from reaching the United States.
The State Department’s same program gave awards of $25 million to $35 million to the International Medical Corps, Save the Children, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, organizations with long records of outbreak response. Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped lead the American government’s response to the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, told ProPublica he could not understand why a lucrative award went to a firm with no African experience when countless organizations have spent decades doing exactly this work.
The Contracts Quietly Boosted A Sale Price
In July, XWELL announced plans to sell XpresTest, along with its spa line, to a private facial spa company for $13 million. Ernst acknowledged the government contracts factored into that price and will transfer with XpresTest to the buyer. That means the company the Trump family linked fund invested in stands to profit from the administration’s contracts even though it will not perform any of the government work.
A spokesperson for the president’s sons said the brothers are passive minority investors in the fund, held no knowledge of or involvement in the contract negotiations, are private citizens holding no government positions, and have broken no laws. Dominari CEO Anthony Hayes told ProPublica he has never seen or heard of either brother using the family name to influence a government contract. The State Department said its award went through a competitive process, and Ernst said both contracts were won through competitive bidding; the CDC did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.
Part Of A Much Bigger Pattern
This is not an isolated transaction. ProPublica notes that Powerus, a drone company in the American Ventures portfolio, won an Air Force contract worth up to $90 million about five months after the Trump brothers’ involvement became public. Washington Post reporting found the brothers have invested heavily in defense technology startups while their father’s administration pours federal money into the sector.
The fund itself has grown into a giant. American Ventures has raised more than $1 billion across 21 investment vehicles aimed at industries the White House actively promotes, including AI, drones, and cryptocurrency. Bloomberg News found the fund follows a pattern of buying into little known companies whose shares then surge on announcements tied to the famous names behind the money. All of it unfolds under a president who already announced plans for a golf course on federal land after telling a federal judge the idea was hypothetical.
Congressional Democrats are paying attention. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wrote to colleagues that corrupting government for personal gain over the public interest destroys Americans’ trust and wastes their tax dollars. Whether anyone in this administration faces consequences is another question entirely; the agencies writing these checks answer to the father of the men whose fund keeps cashing them.
