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| -Land of the Free |
| The Mark Kelly Industrial Complex: Defense Contractor with Lucrative Pentagon Contracts Rents Plane to Arizona's Vulnerable Democrat |
| 2022-10-01 |
| [Breitbart] Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) campaign has paid tens of thousands of dollars for plane rentals to an Arizona-based company that has been awarded lucrative contracts from the Department of Defense (DOD), including one contract funded by legislation Kelly voted for. One of three contracts awarded to Newton Consulting & Engineering, Inc. (NCE) came last year after Kelly had been conducting business with the company and was serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In fact, Kelly voted for the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gave the DOD funding it ultimately drew from for the contract. Of note, the DOD selects companies to award contracts to after receiving annual funding, not the U.S. Senate. Since April 2021, the Mark Kelly for Senate committee has shelled out more than $80,000 to the Tuscon-based company for “Officially Connected” travel. Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the author of numerous best-sellers including Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, spoke to Kelly’s ties in a statement to Breitbart News. “It’s incumbent on our elected officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. In this case, Senator Kelly has failed the test,” wrote Schweizer, a Breitbart News senior contributor. Bob Newton, an Air Force veteran with service-linked disabilities, owns the company and confirmed to Breitbart News via email that Kelly has been “using [their] planes for regional travel.” NCE’s website makes no explicit reference to plane rentals on its publicly accessible pages, but it does note a “Specialized Aircraft Club,” which Newton says offers aircraft use to members. “We matched Senator Kelly up with the planes that best fit his needs,” said Newton. Kelly appears to often rent one plane in particular, a single-engine Columbia LC41-550FG with tail number N235SL. The plane is registered to the defense contractor and has mirrored some of Kelly’s travels on the campaign trail over the past month. Records from flight tracking website FlightAware show that on August 30, the plane departed Marana Regional Airport in Arizona at 7:27 a.m. and landed at Kingman Airport at 8:48 a.m. MST. At 9:07 a.m. MST, Kelly tweeted a video of himself readying a plane. In one angle, characters painted on the side of the plane read “5SL,” though Kelly’s body obstructs the beginning of the number. In another shot, the letter “N” can be seen on the side of the plane, but the camera angle cuts out the following characters. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 So its not that he hates weapons, he just want to be one of the sole providers. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2022-10-01 10:42 |