Courthouse News Service: Private-Prison Turnaround Triggers DOJ Records Hunt

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Expert

A specific focus of the suit filed Thursday in Washington by the Campaign Legal Center is whether or how the decision was shaped by more than $200,000 in political donations made by the GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private-prison contractors, to a super PAC that supported then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The GEO Group received a $110 million contract this past April to build a new immigrant detention center – the first under President Trump’s administration.

Adav Noti, the Campaign Legal Center’s senior director for trial litigation and strategy, said he hopes the requested documents from the DOJ will shed light on the existence of a possible quid pro quo.

“The reason that federal contractors have been prohibited for 75 years from making political contributions is for exactly this reason,” Noti said in a phone interview. “At a minimum it gives the impression that they bought this contract.”

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