Sen. Adam Schiff accused President Donald Trump on Thursday of handing $600 million of taxpayer funds to a company tied to Donald Trump Jr., calling it a “wedding present” after a Pentagon loan approval for Vulcan Elements. Schiff wrote that “the Trump family grift knows no bounds, and neither should our resolve to stop it.”
The post landed as attention again turned to Donald Trump Jr. and 1789 Capital, the investment firm that took an undisclosed stake in Vulcan Elements three months before the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital approved a conditional $620 million loan for the rare-earth magnet maker in late November. Schiff linked to a ProPublica report on the deal, and the timing gave his accusation immediate political force: he was not describing an old dispute, but a fresh federal financing decision involving a company with a Trump family tie.
Vulcan Elements sits at the center of a broader push to build a domestic rare earth magnet supply chain. In early November, American Resources Corp. announced a $1.4 billion partnership with the U.S. government through ReElement Technologies and Vulcan Elements, a plan framed around reducing dependence on foreign supply. That backdrop matters because Schiff’s charge is not just about one company’s financing; it is about whether a federal investment decision was shaped by proximity to the Trump family.
There is also a gap in the story that has not been closed. Trump Jr., the Pentagon and the company have denied political influence over the loan, while a ProPublica investigation said the request was reportedly initiated by Peter Navarro, a Trump adviser and associate of Trump Jr. If that version is right, the path to the loan may have started inside the Trump orbit without any overt White House order at all. What remains unanswered is whether anyone in the administration intervened to push the deal over the line.
The episode fits a pattern that is already drawing scrutiny. In April, Foundation Future Industries, backed by Eric Trump, secured a $24 million Pentagon contract, and a separate report earlier this month said a company backed by the Trump sons invested in a mining group developing a $1.6 billion project in Kazakhstan that was awarded by the Trump administration. Schiff’s accusation will now turn on the same question that has trailed those deals: whether the administration can separate public money from family business when the two are moving in the same direction.
