(Bloomberg) -- Top aides to former President Donald Trump pressured Treasury and Defense Department officials to approve a $700 million pandemic relief loan for the Yellow Corp. trucking company even though it was deemed ineligible, congressional investigators concluded. 

The firm, now based in Nashville, was considered not critical to national security, the key requirement, but nonetheless received 95% of the funds disbursed under the loan program. 

Trump discussed the loan in June 2020 with then-International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa, who was working with the company to lobby for the loan, according to a report released Wednesday by the Democratic majority staff on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

“These records suggest that President Trump may have intervened to press for Yellow’s receipt of the $700 million national security loan based on the calculation that it could result in praise from a union leader months before the presidential election,” the report states.

The 28-page report depicts then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Political Director Brian Jack as among those aiding in the approval of the loan to Yellow Corp. under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act program. The company was then known as YRC Worldwide Inc.

The loan program was intended for companies deemed “critical to maintaining national security” to offset their pandemic-related losses as a result. But an initial Defense Department analysis determined Yellow Corp.’s carrier services did not meet that requirement.

Despite that, Yellow Corp.’s $700 million loan was announced on July 1, 2020. The company was the sole program recipient until late October 2020, when 10 companies received loans totaling $35.9 million.

“Political appointees risked hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds against the recommendations of career DOD officials,” Representative James Clyburn, the panel’s chair, said in a statement, referring to the Department of Defense.  

Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, has asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general to investigate whether Yellow Corp.’s application violated federal law.

Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer representing the company, said in a five-page letter sent to Clyburn on Tuesday that “while Yellow has not had the opportunity to review and digest the committee’s report, we are writing to address the unsubstantiated, and indeed demonstrably false, allegations that we understand the committee to be asserting against Yellow in that report.”

Kasowitz said the loan “saved 30,000 jobs,” and “enabled Yellow to help protect the U.S. economy during the height of the Covid crisis.”

The panel received and reviewed approximately 12,000 pages of documents, including White House records obtained by the National Archives and Records Administration. It also interviewed witnesses from the Treasury and Defense departments.

Less than a month into widespread pandemic shutdowns, White House officials sent Yellow’s application to Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Brian Morgenstern and requested that he call the company’s chief executive.

A few days later, Yellow lobbyists wrote that Jack, Trump’s political director, was “almost giddy” about working on the company’s loan application “considering the Teamsters angle.” Yellow employed union members as its drivers.

Other documents show that Yellow continued to contact other White House officials throughout May 2020, including calls between the company’s lobbyists and Meadows.

Meadows offered to call then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about Yellow’s application, according to emails obtained by the panel. Company lobbyists also reported they had already “talked to Meadows three different times” by mid-June and identified him as “the key actor.” 

Trump’s call with Hoffa is referenced in a June 19, 2020, communication from Yellow’s lobbyist to a Defense Department official.

That Trump-Hoffa conversation was also communicated to Mnuchin, according to other documents. Still, on June 24 or June 25, career Defense officials informed the Treasury Department that Yellow Corp. wasn’t eligible for the loan. 

Mnuchin’s office requested an urgent call “re: YRC and DOD certification” between the two department secretaries, and a call took place the next morning.

After that exchange, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper signed a letter to Treasury certifying that Yellow was, in fact, “critical to maintaining national security.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.