The Department of Defense has accepted a $130 million donation from an unnamed source to help pay active-duty service members during the government shutdown, the agency said Friday.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that the funds were accepted under DOD’s “general gift acceptance authority.”
“The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of service members’ salaries and benefits,” he continued, claiming Democrats “opted to withhold pay from troops” when they refused to pass a spending bill that would strip health care from millions of Americans.
Trump first announced the donation offer Thursday, saying the overture came from a “friend of mine” who told him, “I love the military and I love the country.”
“He called us the other day and said, ‘I’d like to contribute any shortfall you have because of the Democrat shutdown,’” Trump said.
The administration’s secrecy around the source of the gift raises some ethical questions, namely whether the DOD abided by its rule that all donations over $10,000 benefiting troops or their family members be reviewed by ethics officers to verify that “the donor does not have interests that may be affected substantially” by the gift.
The DOD declined to answer what protocols it followed, nor would it say whether the donor was an American or a foreign national.
The department also declined questions about how much pay the donation would ensure, but the White House said earlier this month it needed to borrow $6.5 billion from military research and development funding to pay troops from the Oct. 1 start of the shutdown through Oct. 15.
Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, told Politico that based on that total, the $130 million donation would cover about one-third of a single day’s pay for active-duty service members.
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Trump’s announcement came the same day the Senate failed to pass either party’s version of a bill to pay service members and some other federal workers during the shutdown, which is now the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history. The longest occurred during Trump’s first term and lasted 35 days.
