(NEW YORK) — Private prison company CoreCivic reported in a lobbying disclosure that it donated $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee in December, underscoring the close relationship between President Donald Trump and the private prison industry.
As ABC News has previously reported, CoreCivic and private prison company GEO Group, both which have both long supported Trump, saw their stock prices immediately spike after Trump’s victory in the November election.
The industry is expected to grow under Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump reversed former President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order that eliminated DOJ contracts with private prisons.
Both CoreCivic and the GEO Group donated to Trump’s first inaugural committee in 2016, with a subsidiarity of each company donating $250,000, according to past inaugural disclosures.
Several top executives at CoreCivic and GEO Group have also been longtime Republican and Trump donors, Federal Election Commission records show.
Representatives for CoreCivic did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Among other Trump-Vance inaugural committee contributions disclosed in new filings, the Florida-based HVAC company Carrier Global Corporation donated $1 million in what records suggest is the company’s first major political contribution.
Chemical company Syngenta Corporation, now owned by China National Chemical Corporation — known as ChemChina — gave $250,000 to the committee in what was its first inaugural donation in recent years.
The Coca-Cola Company gave $250,000, after giving to both the Biden inaugural committee and Trump’s first inaugural committee, and identify verification company Socure gave $100,000.
Overall contributions to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee set an inauguration record by surpassing the committee’s $150 million goal, boosted by $1 million donations from several major tech firms including Meta and Amazon.
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