U.S. Air Force agreed to buy interceptor drones from Powerus, a startup backed by Trump's sons

On April 30, 2026, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Air Force had agreed to buy an undisclosed number of interceptor drones from Powerus, a West Palm Beach, Florida-based drone startup in which Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. hold investments through their Aureus Greenway Holdings vehicle. According to Brett Velicovich, Powerus co-founder and president, the deal followed a demonstration at a facility in Arizona. The contract added Powerus to a growing list of defense companies affiliated with the Trump sons that have received Pentagon business since January 2025, as Bloomberg noted the arrangement deepened the military's ties to "defense contractors linked to the first family" as the U.S. war with Iran entered its third month.

The Powerus contract was not the first instance of the Pentagon contracting with a company tied to the president's family. A $24 million set of research contracts had previously been awarded to Foundation Future Industries — a humanoid robotics firm where Eric Trump serves as chief strategy adviser — across Army, Navy, and Air Force accounts. By spring 2026, Democratic House members analyzing the pattern found Trump sons linked to investments in at least ten defense firms that had collectively drawn approximately $3.7 billion in federal funds since Inauguration Day. Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised the issue formally with the Pentagon in January 2026; in its response the Defense Department acknowledged it had no specific processes to address conflicts of interest arising from the president's family's business holdings — only standard financial-disclosure review for DoD employees, which does not extend to the president's relatives.

The structural gap was central to the concern: because the president's sons are not government employees, standard conflict-of-interest regulations that apply to federal procurement officials do not cover them. The Pentagon's response to Warren confirmed the absence of any protocol specific to presidential family financial interests, leaving no mechanism to screen whether a contract award was influenced by political favoritism toward companies where the first family holds stakes. CNBC reported that Warren's follow-up letter, co-signed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, characterized this as the department being "oblivious to — and therefore unable to address — the potential for corruption created by the Trump family's investments."

Updates

2026-05-08 — Garcia requested DoD IG investigation into Trump family defense contracts [4]

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to DoD Inspector General Platte B. Moring III on May 8, 2026, requesting a formal investigation into the Pentagon's pattern of awarding contracts to companies affiliated with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Garcia specifically cited the Powerus Air Force deal and Foundation Future Industries contracts, asking the IG to disclose what contracts the Pentagon holds with Trump-affiliated companies, how they were evaluated for conflicts of interest, and what safeguards exist to prevent self-dealing. No IG response or investigation announcement has been publicly reported as of July 2, 2026.