House Rep. Gerry Connolly, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has demanded an investigation into the General Services Administration’s reported plan to grant a $25 million pilot program contract to fintech startup Ramp.
In a May 9 letter sent to the agency’s acting administrator, Connolly, D-VA, requested information and documents related to the bid Ramp has submitted to the GSA and recent meetings between the fintech and senior GSA officials like Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, to better understand GSA’s contractor selection process for the SmartPay program.
Connolly asserted that the Trump administration has called SmartPay “broken” and blocked access for workers at federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Aviation Administration.
“In what appears to be a textbook example of waste, fraud and abuse, the Trump Administration’s false claims about the SmartPay program may be an attempt to discredit the program to provide a new, Trump-affiliated contractor with a lucrative contract,” Connolly wrote in the letter.
The GSA’s pilot program, one of the multiple contracts that comprise its SmartPay program, is an initiative under federal oversight that provides expense cards to government employees to buy office supplies and equipment, book travel, and pay for gas.
The congressman said Ramp has no federal contracting experience, but alleged the company’s ties with Trump’s family and Elon Musk's allies are helping it bag the contract.
Ramp reportedly leveraged its political connections in at least four meetings with Trump appointees at the GSA to snag one of the contracts that makes up the $700 billion program overseeing the federal government’s expense card program, Connolly noted. ProPublica first reported the meetings last month.
Connolly has called GSA’s decision to award the contract to Ramp an example of “pay-to-play” since it bypasses protocols for a public bidding process, and alleged that a GSA employee recently stated that Ramp is the “favorite” to win the contract.
The focus on the corporate credit card firm is unusual and suspicious because “[y]ou don’t want to give this impression that leadership has already decided the winner somehow,” Connolly quoted a senior GSA official as saying.
Connolly highlighted that Ramp’s investors include venture capital firms with ties to prominent individuals connected to President Donald Trump, including Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and Jared Kushner’s brother Joshua Kushner, and allies of Elon Musk. Keith Rabois, one of Ramp’s earliest investors, raised more than $1 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to the congressman.
Connolly insisted upon a detailed and comprehensive explanation of the selection metric used by GSA for the SmartPay pilot program contractors, all documents the agency received from any company bidding for SmartPay, and a detailed list of all meetings and the purpose of each meeting between any GSA officials and any Ramp representative.
Connolly further asked for all communications related to Ramp and the SmartPay pilot program between GSA personnel and any individual associated with the president and the Department of Government Efficiency.
The RFI for the SmartPay pilot program, which was announced on March 20, was open for fewer than seven business days, Connolly said. Ramp reportedly began tapping into its connections in the payments industry about special bank identification numbers required to process government payments before this RFI was publicly announced, he said. Connolly requested an explanation about who decided on the timeline of the RFI and the reason for doing so.
Connolly has asked for the information backed by documents by May 23.
Ramp and the GSA did not return requests for comments.
Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly asked for clarity related to Trump and his family’s ties with various companies and the potential profits they stand to make from them. Last week, House Democrats blocked a first-of-its-kind stablecoin bill, raising concerns about Trump benefiting from crypto because of his involvement in a billion-dollar business deal that also has support from state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX, crypto exchange Binance, and Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial.
Earlier this month, Fortune reported that Eric Trump, Trump’s son, announced that MGX will use stablecoins issued by WLF to pay for its recent $2 billion investment in Binance.
