CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Zach Fuentes Got $3 Million for Medical Masks, Botched It

Zach Fuentes won the federal contract less than two weeks after registering his company, ProPublica reports.

President Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff Zach Fuentes received a $3 million federal contract to provide medical masks to the Navajo Nation less than two weeks after he set up a company, ProPublica reports. Now, the Indian Health Service (IHS) tells ProPublica that 247,000 of the masks, priced at roughly $800,000, don’t work, and 130,400 of them, worth an additional $422,000, are not the type he offered in the procurement contract. Fuentes has refunded $250,000 to the IHS because, he said, he was able to purchase the masks at a lower price than initially quoted. “The IHS Navajo Area Office will determine if these masks will be returned,” the agency told ProPublica.