Rep. Mike Levin Demands Investigation into Shady Pentagon Loan Given to Company Linked to Trump’s Son
Watch Rep. Levin’s Remarks Here
Washington, D.C.—Today, during a House Appropriations Committee markup, Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49) introduced an amendment to require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate a $620 million loan awarded to Vulcan Elements. The amendment was rejected by Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, except for Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA-04) who supported it. Republicans gave no substantive reasons for rejecting the amendment.
In November 2025, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) awarded a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements. Prior to the award, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm bought a stake in Vulcan Elements, and after Vulcan received the award, the company’s value ballooned from $200 million to $2 billion. According to a ProPublica investigation, the direction to give Vulcan the loan came directly from the White House. Of all the companies DoD was considering for this type of funding at the time, Vulcan Elements was the only one with the backing of the White House.
During debate on the amendment, Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chair Ken Calvert (CA-41) was unable to offer substantive reasons for rejecting the amendment. He offered the only remarks from the Republican side of the Committee stating, “I thank the gentleman for his amendment. This amendment directs an investigation into the Office of Strategic Capital to assess whether conflicts of interest drive decisions on financing. The Office of Strategic Capital is a transformative tool. Without them, we would not be able to strengthen our national industrial base. I believe it's doing a good job, and I was happy to help create the National Strategic Capital account. I oppose this amendment and I yield back.”
Rep. Levin’s amendment would have initiated a GAO investigation into how the Vulcan loan was pursued and finalized. It would have also assessed OSC’s procedures for preventing any conflicts of interest and ensuring open and competitive access to all interested parties.
Read Rep. Levin’s remarks as prepared for delivery below:
When the federal government commits hundreds of millions of dollars of the people’s money, the people have a right to know how that decision was made.
That is the reason the Government Accountability Office exists, and it is why this committee, under chairs of both parties, has asked GAO countless times to review how dollars are spent.
This amendment applies that principle to one transaction, a single loan, to Vulcan Elements. And I want to explain why this particular loan, more than any other loan the Office of Strategic Capital – or OSC – has made, deserves a closer look.
Let me start by saying I support the mission of OSC. Reducing our dependence on China for rare earth minerals is a genuine national security priority, and I expect there is no disagreement in this room about that. That is exactly why I want this program to be beyond reproach. If we believe in it, we should want its decisions to be clean, competitive, and defensible, able to withstand scrutiny rather than avoid it.
So let me walk through what makes this particular loan an outlier.
First, the size. At $620 million dollars, this is one of the single largest loans in the history of OSC, and a commitment of that scale warrants careful review on its own.
Then the speed, and how it came about. Loans like this are normally the product of many months of diligence, but this one was finalized in a matter of weeks. According to public reporting, career staff at OSC were told this deal was a priority for Peter Navarro, a senior White House advisor, and did not go through OSC’s normal process. I believe that alone is reason enough for an independent review.
Consider the company itself. Vulcan Elements was founded in 2023, and at the time of this loan it had only a small fraction of the production capacity the money was meant to build. This was not an established producer with a long track record. It was a two-year-old startup receiving the largest loan this office had ever issued.
Look at the timing of the private investment. Just months before the Pentagon announced this deal, a venture firm connected to the President’s family took a stake in the company. The proximity of that investment to a record federal loan, pushed by a White House adviser, is precisely the kind of sequence oversight is meant to examine.
And consider the result. After the loan was announced, the company’s reported valuation jumped roughly tenfold, from about $200 million to around $2 billion. When a single federal lending decision moves a company’s value that dramatically, the public has a clear and legitimate interest in knowing that decision was made on the merits.
I want to be careful and fair here. Not one of these facts, standing alone, proves anything improper. It is entirely possible that Vulcan was the strongest applicant and that every rule was followed. If that is the case, the review this amendment calls for will confirm it, and the program will be stronger for having been tested. But the only way to know is to look.
And taken together, one of the largest loans in the program’s history, finalized in weeks rather than months, pushed by a White House adviser, to a two-year-old startup, shortly after a politically connected investment, followed by a tenfold valuation increase, this is not an ordinary transaction by any measure.
So let me be clear about what this amendment does and does not do. It directs GAO to examine how this loan was pursued and finalized, and to assess whether the office’s procedures for preventing conflicts of interest and ensuring open, competitive access were followed.
It does not accuse anyone of a crime. It does not cut a dollar, block the loan, or slow the program. It simply asks a nonpartisan, independent agency to verify that this transaction was handled the way the program’s own standards require.
I believe that is the easiest vote in the world to explain to the people we serve, because every one of them already knows that the biggest and fastest deals are exactly the ones that deserve a second set of eyes.
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