The private prison corporation GEO Group held its annual leadership conference at President Donald Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, the latest in a string of efforts seemingly aimed at currying favor with the Trump administration.
The company donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, which raised substantially more than any such committee in history, thanks to a slew of corporate and politically connected donors — and a GEO Group subsidiary donated $225,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC during the 2016 election, the Post noted. The report added that GEO Group has hired three new lobbyists in the past year: two former aides to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and a representative of the Trump Organization in Florida who raised money for Trump’s campaign.
The Post reported that GEO Group had seemingly held only one other event at the same location: a shareholder meeting in 2007, before Trump owned the resort. Last week’s conference, according to the report, included “four days of meetings, dinner receptions and golf outings” for company executives and wardens.
If it’s influence GEO Group is after, it’d be hard to argue the company’s efforts are failing: Jeff Sessions, just a few days after taking the helm of the Justice Department, reversed the previous administration’s decision to reduce the use of private prisons.
A few months earlier, when Trump won the presidency, the entire private prison industry’s stocks spiked.
In April, GEO Group announced it had won a $110 million federal contract to build the first new immigrant detention center of Trump’s administration.
