Federal officials on Wednesday were asked to investigate whether an Overland Park trucking company broke federal law when securing a $700 million loan through a federal pandemic aid program — a sum that accounted for 95% of the money allocated to the program.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn — who heads a U.S. House of Representatives Committee tasked with investigating waste, fraud and abuse in federal pandemic relief programs — sent a letter to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General asking it to investigate whether Yellow Corporation, formerly known as YRC, made false claims and statements about its company when requesting the loan from the government, in potential violation of the Federal False Claims Act.
The company called the claims “unsubstantiated” and “demonstrably false.”
Clyburn’s letter comes on the heels of a report by the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis that found the administration of former President Donald Trump ignored the advice of Department of Defense experts by granting the company a loan through a program to help firms considered critical to the country’s national security continue to operate through the pandemic.
The committee’s report highlights another example of the company making use of its connections to the Trump White House.
The former president picked the company’s chief executive Darren Hawkins to serve on a coronavirus economic task force and he tapped former CEO William Zollers to the Postal Service Board of Governors...
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